Let me start out by saying that I am clearly not the luckiest person alive. Sure, I have had some great victories – beating a nasty case of testicular cancer being among the highlights, and survived some ridiculous trauma – including a divorce that won’t end, but none of these qualify me for the title of the “Luckiest Person on Earth.”

I also have two kids who love me (or at least don’t hate me). And they’re great kids, too. But a lot of us have great kids that like us (or at least don’t hate us). While I can definitively say that I’m not the unluckiest person on Earth, this doesn’t qualify me for Luckiest Person on Earth, either.

I’ve also been reasonably lucky in the workplace, always finding a net when the bottom crashed out. And romance? Well, that’s been up-and-down, but it seems to work out OK.

My mother certainly could be the Luckiest Person on Earth. Born in Germany in 1923, she survived the Nazis through cunning, skill, luck and determination. She went on to have a long, happy marriage and run a business. And she’s still alive and kicking at 93. Not only that, but her luckiest day may have been the day that I, the not-quite luckiest man was born and become her son (but I doubt it). A lucky woman, she is still not the Luckiest Person on Earth.

Maybe Mario Scarnici or Paul White qualify. After all, they (along with one other) shared $448,000,000 in Powerball winnings. That is about $150,000,000 each (or $86,000,000 in lump sum). But neither Mario nor Paul seem to have done anything big with their win – nothing great for themselves nor anything great for others. After all, the Lucikest Person on Earth does have an obligation to “give back” to the world – to pay some of their good fortune forward. There is no evidence that either Mario or Paul lifted a finger to help the poor or needy.

Some may think that Wilt Chamberlain is the Luckiest Person on Earth. But note an important distinction – I said Luckiest Person on Earth, not the person who Gets Lucky the Most. So Wilt, rest in peace, while the 20,000 notches on your bed post is an impressive accomplishment, it still falls short of making you the Luckiest Person on Earth. Any anyhow, you’re dead, so you may not be on Earth at this point.

So if it isn’t me, isn’t my mom, isn’t Mario or Paul and isn’t Wilt, who is the “Luckiest Person on Earth?”

Let’s start by saying that this person’s story is one that wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for the Internet or YouTube.

You’re thinking “Psy” – after all, Gangnam Style went platinum and is one of the most popular videos of all times. And Hyuna (the redhead he performs with) has to be one of the most beautiful women anywhere. So is the “Luckiest Person on Earth” this pudgy, Korean mega-star? The one who captured YouTube by storm? No, the answer could not be that simple.

The story of the Luckiest Person on Earth started in Manila, where he was born in 1967. His life was part tragedy and part success, with a mom who nurtured him until her untimely death when he was 13. Because of this, the family went broke, and our hero struck out on his own at the ripe old age of 13.

He found some success using his skill, but also struggled and spent about two years living on the streets (and for those who have never been to Manila, those streets make Skid Row here look pretty luxurious). His skill, singing, carried him through and he met with some success playing music in restaurants and small clubs in the Philippines and Hong Kong. Nothing more than a few people looking at him and his band as they played some original songs and some covers.

He actually got a couple of Asian recording contracts, too… meeting with some regional success, but nothing that would qualify him as the Luckiest Person on Earth. He just bounced around near the lower- to mid-levels of the music business, like many around here do, making a living and slowly aging out of the pop scene.

Like a child, it takes a villiage to create the Luckiest Person on Earth. Friends who believe in you help humanize you and pick you up when you’re down. Our hero is no different. Friends gave him sofas to surf on, jobs here and there and also put the voice and image of our there on YouTube.

And that is where it gets interesting. Neal Schon was looking for a new singer for his band. After the lead singer left, the band stayed together, but was faced with diminishing success. Smaller crowds, smaller venues, smaller paychecks. It couldn’t go on for too much longer.

A friend of Neal’s sent him a link to a YouTube video of our hero singing. He and his cover band, Zoo, were singing a cover of one of Neal’s band’s greatist hits. It was magic… and that day in June, 2007, Neal reached out to our hero and scheduled an audition in the U.S.

Our hero didn’t believe it – after all, a call out of the blue inviting one to leave their country and audition for a famous has-been band in the U.S. sounds like total BS. His
friend, the guy who
put him on YouTube, finally persuaded our hero to answer the email. Neal called 10 minutes later, and our hero was on a plane before the end of the next month.
In December, after working with the band, our hero was named the lead singer of the band. On February 21, 2008, he had is debut in Chile, in front of thousands of fans. His energy revived not only the music of Journey, but the band themselves. Our hero, Arnel Pineda, starting on the streets of Manila is now the lead singer of the supergroup Journey. Arnel Pineda, picked out of millions of YouTube videos, is now the face, voice and soul of the supergroup Journey. Don’t Stop Believeing.

The patriarch sits in his comfortable chair, eyes half closed, kinda dozing off. The women are in the kitchen squabbling about the pot roast — too much salt, not enough pepper. They do this every year.

Some game or another flickers on the TV. The purpose of the game to the patriarch is clear – it provides the white noise that covers up (a) the women bickering, (b) the older boy’s Rooster Tooth podcast, and (c) the incessant sound of guns and death coming from the younger boy’s xbox.

For these purposes, bowling is the gold standard. The ball rolls down the alley — microphones poised to catch the rumble of hard rubber against polished wood. A few seconds later, the soft sound of the pins mixing it up, like distant thunder. Soft, deep male voices between shots bridge the sound gaps — a perfect backdrop for a perfect nap.

Even better, televised bowling seems to repel everyone except the old dog. The old dog seems to get it, a frustrated patriarch in his own right, his ability to reproduce ended before it even begun. But the old dog is another old man, and lays comfortably in front of the sound of the pins falling.

The patriarch sighs and settles further into his chair — he isn’t sure, but he thinks he hears himself snoring. The thought startles him a bit and he awakens, only to find the dog at his feet, snoring and passing gas. The patriarch lets one go too — the women won’t know if it was the dog or him. He smiles and settles back into his twilight zone. It is the third frame.

Truth be told, the women wouldn’t know if it was him or the dog because they won’t get within ten feet of his bowling sanctuary. He’s lucky with these women, they respect his space and territory. He respects theirs, too, which is one of the reasons that he invested in a beer fridge a few years back. He doesn’t need to interrupt them, nor them him, and all seem happier because of it.

The patriarch awakes to a sensation — he has to take a piss. four and a half frames have gone by, Johnson is leading Walker by 12 pins going into the all-important eighth frame. He slowly forces himself out of his chair, the old dog laying flat on his side opens one eye for a moment, then closes it. Back in the old days, he would have popped out of the chair and the dog would have bounded after him, but those days are gone.

He goes to the bathroom, unzips, and lets the pee flow out of him like a yellowish river. He’s fortunate that it isn’t his prostate causing this — yet — it was the beer. Satisfied that his innards are still working properly, he goes over to wash his hands. He looks down, turns on the faucet and presses on the liquid soap dispenser, washing his hands for a few seconds. He rinses his hands, fills them with cold water, and splashes the water onto his face.

He looks up into the mirror to comb his hair and I see myself — the face that I’ve seen in that mirror for nearly sixty years — but no longer the kid that I once was. Now I see the patriarch. Me.

My friend Stan had a heart attack this weekend. He’s lucky — got a stent that will keep him around for a long time.

Stan is my age and we’ve known each other for 52 years or so (since we were 5). Stan and I were inseparable as kids, growing apart through middle and high school as our lives took separate paths. We’ve kept in touch and lost touch repeatedly over the years, reconnecting most recently a month or so ago when I was planning my high school reunion trip. Probably a story that is repeated hundreds, no, millions of times a day in this world.

This is starting to sound like a eulogy, but it isn’t. Stan is alive and well, stent in place. Diet and exercise will keep him here, too, and there is no real concern about his imminent demise. Still, this was probably the greatest signpost of aging that I have had to face in a long time, and it did get me thinking.

I’m 57 and entering the stage of my life where people will start passing around me from natural causes other than cancer (I exclude cancer here because cancer is the one killer that doesn’t seem to correlate with age in a fairly linear manner). It is an adjustment period, as now, when I loose a childhood friend, it looks less like a shocking tragedy and more like the ordinary progress of life and aging.

Also, it is never far from my thoughts that I could be one of the early ones.

I guess what is most telling is that I wasn’t shocked by the news of Stan’s heart attack as I would have been even two years ago. Instead, I felt bad and scared for Stan and his family, and acknowledged that this happened at a relatively young age — but the truth is that age had a role. And it is the beginning of a process that will happen again and again, friend after friend (or me, for that matter) until there is one, and then none of our generation left.

This is what life is supposed to be, I know. A journey through an existence that is by its nature, temporary, with no real understanding why we’re here or what we’re here for (I expect people of dogma to disagree with this assertion). It seems as if our bodies — if we’re lucky in a lot of ways — can get to around 110. But that does seem to be the outside number.

I know, you’re thinking that average lifespans have increased. That is true — and it is also true that the number of people in their 90’s and 100’s have increased as well. But an average is just that, and is affected by major shifts on the other end of the scale – lower childhood mortality, increased survivability from wars and epidemics, plentiful food, relative peace, etc. All of these play into the numbers.

This year marks the 40th high school reunion for Stan and I. 40 years since high school. 40 years of being an “adult.” That is a long time and a lot of changes. I’m dreading the fact that I’ll be in a room of my contemporaries, many of which look much, much older than I perceive myself to be. But like everyone else, my mirror lies to me, my close-cropped hair doesn’t really show grey (but my beard does, so I’m clean-shaven), and my attitude about life lacks the general gravitas of many of my peers.

I will be there, dents and cracks, along with people I haven’t spoken to in 40 years. We’ll all share the memory of place as it was in 1972-1975, the faded memories of people gone by, of teachers now old, retired or dead, of relationships lasting or fading, of exploits that would frighten us now. Like old photos that have their colors washed out, yellowed pages of paper, and wrinkled faces and hands. And we’ll all wake up the next morning with a hangover that only 40 years can bring.

This is how it should be. This is how it must be.