Everything Happens to Me

The speaker sees himself as unusually unlucky. Small frustrations—rain spoiling golf, a neighbor objecting to a party, illness, and missed trains—build into a general sense that life keeps going wrong. At first, he hopes love will change this pattern and bring relief. When the person he loves says goodbye, that hope collapses, and the song returns to its resigned refrain.

Several images make his bad luck feel almost comic. “Every time I play an ace, my partner always trumps” uses card-game language: even when he has a strong card, someone else beats it. “Break this jinx” means end a run of bad luck, while “mortgaged all my castles in the air” suggests he has invested in dreams that were never solid or practical. Sending messages by telegram, phone, and air mail shows how persistently he tried to reach the other person; “postage due” adds a small, bitterly funny detail to the rejection.

The speaker may be genuinely heartbroken, but he also presents his troubles with exaggeration and humor. His repeated claim that everything happens to him could be a way to cope, or a sign that he feels powerless and sees events through a pessimistic lens. The lyrics do not tell us whether his bad luck is real or how much is his own interpretation.