Two Roses and a Mint Tulip

My politics are a tad left of center, but when it comes to money, I’m a conservative son of a gun. Multiple savings accounts, credit cards with no carried balance, 401K top heavy with steady blue-chippers (or what used to be considered blue-chippers).

I’m not a tightwad. I just play it safe.

Consequently, I do not gamble. I think not of the money I stand to win, but the money I stand to lose, and that’s hardly the attitude to take to the table.
But my little bambina may get me to bend on this.

Little Miss Laura Agatha, who happily chirps away in her stroller as we wheel into the bank each month to buy a bond and make a deposit into her passbook savings, who humors me when I show her the quarterly statements from her college fund (already knowing it may cover the Bachelors, but definitely not the Masters), just might show me a way to rapid and independent prosperity.

My little Bean, at a mere 10 months, has a nose for the horses. On Kentucky Derby day, she picked Super Saver to win-place, Paddy O’Prado to win-place-show and collected on both.

These picks were all hers, conveyed via plastic shapes from her toy box: green square for the horse with the Irish name, orange star to match the insignia Super Saver jockey Calvin Borel wore on his helmet and jersey.

This horse sense Laura gets from the maternal line. Her late great-grandfather Dan was such a frequent visitor to the Southampton, New York OTB that he could have sold his own line of miniature pencils.

(Fortunately, he fared well enough with the trifectas to avoid such a fate.)

And it was his daughter Linda — a.k.a. Lucky Linda and, for 10 months and counting, Nan Linda — who placed the Bean’s bet at the very same parlor.

(Nan Linda also handled the wagering for the Derby pool she runs at the Catholic school where she teaches; Line of David being a popular, but fruitless pick there.)

I don’t know how many grandmother-granddaughter betting tandems are out there, but I’m willing to invest in this one. Lucky Linda and Lucky Laura: I like the shape of things to come.