Do you know anybody who is a persistant winner?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Someone who by any definition has the Midas touch?

I personally don’t, but I have a friend who’s cousin is apparently the belle at every ball. He’s an academic high-achiever, popular with the ladies and on the local football team (something of a rising star, or so I’m told).

This guy doesn’t seem to put a foot wrong. Once (and I was there for this) he gambled on two outside bets (and I mean the odds were wayyyyyyyyy long) but he still won on both counts. We went round the book-keepers to collect, however, he wasn’t exactly in the mood to pay up (some rather dodgy dealing, unfortunately). Two of his heavies came to escort us out, and I remember thinking that the only thing I wanted to do was to get the hell outta there as fast as I could. So Golden Boy wants his money, and he throws a chair out of a window in a fit of rage to make his point.

What transpires next is remarkable. One guy comes up behind him to grab him by the neck, and so Golden B. swings his hand backwards rolled up into a fist (like a fisted bitchslap). The guy slumps to the floor bleeding at the mouth (I really don’t know but he looked unconcious - by this time I had totally wet my pants - or almost just.)

The second guy he just punches in the face before he can even think about it, and “whammo!”… he almost flies into another table. He turns to the book-keeper and sort of strikes a pose as he’s to his side. He half-lifts his eyebrow, gesturing like, “are you gonna pay up?”

About half an hour later we’re out of there, money and all.

This guy isn’t really even particularly huge (well built and 6’0). But he just commands a presence. I don’t really know him and I’ve only met him the once (yeah, that was the only time). Other than the stories emanating about him though, I can’t think of a single person who is a global winner like he is.

The closest I can is a guy who’s good at his studies and sports, but really a loser with girls and pretty much everything else. There are a few women who are confident and cool, but not supercool.

Do you know anybody like this - the kind that the car just opens on demand for, that the opposite sex just flings off, that managers just beg to give a job to etc. …

Do you know any constant winners, who are so cool it seems as though they were manufactured in some sort of “winners” laboratory?

2

Me.

Not a winner of games or anything, but I’m successful in everything I do.

My husband’s family is like that, too. They’ve never owned a business that didn’t do well, and they have way more money than people with their education, background and social ties “should” have.

3

One of my good friends came by my cubicle yesterday morning to tell me about his weekend. He’d been out to see a concert in the city with some friends, but when they got there the show was sold out. If it were me telling the story, it would’ve stopped there.

But not this guy. Instead, they went to a bar to have a few drinks before heading home. Four guys, sitting alone in an empty bar. As they were sitting there, not one, not two, but five separate bachelorette parties staggered their way into the bar. All the women were doing some scavenger hunt party game thing, so they kept asking my friend to take their pictures, pose in pictures with them, write his name on various body parts, give them his phone number, etc.

Through skillful manipulation, he managed to find out where the women were heading next and head them off at a big dance club. More cavorting ensued, and he ended up with two of their phone numbers. As he was telling me the story the next day, one of them called him to set up a dinner date. The other called not much later.

And still, he insists that there’s nothing unusual about all this. One of those people you wish you could hate if he weren’t such a nice guy.

4

So…this guy is a gambler, consorts with shady bookies, and engages in a brawl to get his money, and you believe this makes him 'supercool and having a ‘midas touch’? :rolleyes:

Can’t say I agree with your analysis. My daughter was married to an asshole like this, right down to the football playing academic overachiever who wowed the women.

After two years of his addictive gambling behavior, alcoholic episodes and mental abuse, she divorced the prick.

5

Example?

6

When I step out my door in the morning, even though my bus in on a ten-minute schedule (buses every 10 minutes) the bus is always rounding the corner. I walk up to the stop, fish a token out of my pocket, and step onto the bus, rain or shine.

When I get to work, I walk to the crossing, and it turns to “WALK.” I cross two streets without waiting, say hello to my office’s doorman, and then walk into a waiting elevator, which I take up to the 14th floor. My companions rarely want to stop anywhere below my floor, so it’s an “express.”

I would say that I don’t have this work out for me once a week. So, four days a week, I

  • walk into a waiting bus
  • cross two streets without stopping,
    and
  • step into an elevator that takes me directly to my floor.

Got that so far? Okay, then try this on, too.

I am a Delawarean, but as a tourist in Boston, Chicago, Indianapolis, New Orleans, and London, I was stopped by a fellow tourist and asked directions within a day of arriving in the city. In each case, I was mistaken for a local, and in each case, I admitted to not being local, but knowing exactly where to send them.

In Chicago, I walked around the city for eight hours straight and waited for a total of five WALK/DON’T WALK lights during the course of the day.

At a St. Patrick’s Day concert, my roommate bought my ticket because he owed me for dinner. I kept the stub, and when door prizes were drawn, I said something like “I don’t know why I bother, there’s nothing up there I really want.” He said, “Basically all I’m looking at is the BASS mirror.” I laughed, and said, “If I win, it’s yours – you bought the ticket after all.” Five minutes later, jackpot. I win the Bass mirror and hand it over with a smile.

So it’s the little stuff.

7

Every time I see this thread, I read winner as whiner, and I think: “Yes! I do!” But no, I don’t know any persistent winners.

8

I don’t think I have made any huge mistakes. I have won a few, lost a few, but never lost so much, or so many, to have a negative affect on my outlook towards the future. I see the glass half full, I always have, and I hope I always will. To me, a positive attitude is much more important than winning every hand you are dealt in life.

9

My circle of friends was joined for a few months this year by a young woman who, for reasons that do not pertain to the thread, is no longer an aquaintance of ours.

But this girl had some fantastic luck. I think she had a touch of something else…she was eerily clairvoyant at times. She had a few stories that I can’t corroborate but were confirmed by her husband. He’s a good bit older than her, ex-military and CIA, and a fantastic guy to get loaded with. I don’t believe he would bullshit you just to make his wife look good.

Anyhoo…hanging out with this girl would get you in to places you wouldn’t imagine. She got my friends and I backstage at concerts, free drinks at bars (not easy in a college town), and if she couldn’t get you an odd item you needed she knew someone who could. For free. She had a real gift of the gab, could talk her way in to and out of nearly anything. Tennessee just approved the lottery and gambling, so of course she bought all kinds of lottery tickets. She never won big money, but she rarely came away empty handed. Lots of $25 winnings.

But what really got me was the way she played cards. My dorm room was a safe haven for all sorts of penny-ante card games and darts. BYOB and bring your loose change, crash where you fall.

One night we’re playing Tripoley, a game that combines poker and rummy (or maybe gin…can never remember which). When it comes to poker, I found out the hard way not to bet against this girl when she goes blind. She would get a “feeling” about her cards and bet without looking at them. Wouldn’t touch them. Every time she went blind she had a least a full house. Lots of straights and four-of-a-kinds. Unstoppable.

It was utterly fascinating. After I left the game to pursue my beer buzz I sat next to her and just watched. Pretty soon she went blind again. I asked her what kind of hand she thought she had. She said a boat, or full house. Just for the hell of it I asked her what cards she had. She looks at me and verbatim says,“I’m feeling queens and tens. But it’s not coming in real clear.” She says it like people predict their cards all the time, no biggie.

I swear to god, she turned her cards at the call and she had a full house. Two queens, three 10s.

Like I said, fucking eerie.

10

To be fair, I think the OP meant that things always work out for this guy, in which, regular Joes [us?] would likely fail in those situations. Hence the “Midas touch”.