A Philosophical Question

Being of a superficial bent, I rarely take the time to ponder philosophical or scientific problems. But this week , a pair of temporally disconnected but physically related incidents forced me to ruminate over a question I had not heretofore considered: Is stepping in dog shit lucky?
This seems to me to be both a philosophical and scientific problem. Philosophical, because solving it requires a definition of "lucky," an elusive term meaning different things to different people. Scientific, because any valid conclusion requires empirical evidence of the ramifications of stepping in dog shit.
Although neither a philosopher nor a scientist, I may, in fact, have more expertise than both in this matter, having stepped in dog shit both Tuesday and Wednesday. For us to properly analyze the problem posed, we will need a brief description of causative events.
Tuesday morning, wearing new beige, gold and gray Saucony sneakers, with soles stippled with 50 protruding triangular treads, each surrounded by an indentation 1/4 inch deep and 1/8 inch around, I planted my right shoe squarely in a pile of dog shit. I had been engrossed in thinking about whether to have a salad with tofu or a hummus sandwich for lunch and consequently did not observe the pile beforehand. Feeling the unmistakable squishiness beneath my foot, I inspected the sole of the sneaker. At the heel, each tread was covered with dog shit and more troubling, the 1/4 inch indentation around each tread tread was filled with canine excrement.
Despite the miasma that accompanied me, I continued walking to work and, once there, changed my shoes and spent twenty minutes at the ladies room sink trying to expunge the shit from the shoe. Using paper towels, I was quite successful in cleaning the treads, but only partially successful in cleaning the indentations. They required a special tool unavailable at the office, to wit, Q-tips. The process would have to be completed at home and it was. The final cleaning process was not as unpleasant as one might think, because by the the time of its undertaking,eight hours after the incident, I was inured to the stench.
Tuesday night, I gave considerable thought to whether the incident was "lucky." On the one hand, nothing bad, other than stepping in shit, had happened to me. That could, by an individual with extremely low expectations, be deemed lucky. On the other hand, nothing good had happened to me, other than my thoroughly enjoying the salad with tofu. I was able to draw no conclusion.
Wednesday, as I walked home, I marveled at the pungency of the fruit of female ginkgo tree, the odor of which accompanied me even into the subway, Macy's and Associated. When the unpleasant aroma was still with me as I turned my key in the lock, I thought to observe the bottom of the self-same sneakers. The sole of the right sneaker, soiled the previous day, was pristine. The heel of the left sneaker was encrusted in dog shit.
While some might have been annoyed by having stepped in shit two days in a row,always an optimist, I viewed the second incident as an opportunity to accumulate further data on the luckiness of such an episode. Unlike those with low expectations, I do not define "luck" as the absence of a bad occurrence. Thus, I do not consider it lucky that I did not fracture a hip in dance class. (However I would have considered it lucky had I fallen and not fractured a hip.) I define "luck" as an intangible without which a fabulous event would not have occurred. I would be able to say, with absolute certainty, that stepping in dog shit was lucky, if Thursday, I had received a call that I was the recipient of the Nobel prize for literature. Or, more realistically, that Kevin Costner had posted in Missed Connections on Craig's List: Seen on the 14A bus, short woman with two Trader Joe's bags, got off at Jane Street. You won my heart when the cherry tomatoes spilled out of the bag and you picked them up so gracefully."
As of today, I can say only that in the short run, stepping in shit does not appear to be lucky. I can say nothing about its long range effects, but if the Nobel committee calls next week, I'll supplement my conclusions.