Gossip, Umbrella, and a Prank Gone Wrong

Mavis glances at her cards one more time before looking around the table. Someone is surely pulling a fast one on her. She hasn't been dealt two aces since she was 75 and playing poker in South Lake.

Ernie, to her left, puts this poker game on every Tuesday night in his room -- 205. It might be him, but Mavis has been playing in this game for three years and she would have expected this type of prank would have come sooner from him.

Across the table is Deloris, Mavis's best friend in Smokey Acres. Deloris is capable of pulling a joke on her, but is falling asleep every deal, and is in no state to stack the deck in Mavis's favor, especially on Ernie's deal.

Clyde is the likely culprit. Sharp as a tack, and wearing his trademark bow tie, Mavis has felt Clyde had more than friendship on the mind since he moved into the home last year.

She plays it coy, looking for a facial expression from any of her three table mates.

"I call." Mavis says as she tosses two pretzels into the pot.

Smokey Acres strictly forbids gambling on the premises, so the residents have a well known currency of pretzels = $0.25, Werther's Originals = $1, and Thin Mints = $5. The girl scouts love coming by each spring, as the residents pounce to stockpile for the year, which are cashed out in early December by Tony, an ex-college football player turned nurse. Winning bettors often share their good fortune with their grand children via Christmas letter.

Ernie folds, Clyde has to wake up Deloris, who blindly throws in a pretzel "gotta see a flop" she sleep-talks, and Clyde checks his option.

Ernie flips over the first card, a red three.

"Dag gummit, Ernie!" Clyde says.

"What??" Ernie responds.

"You forgot to burn a card again, you sack of knobs!"

"Oh, what's that? Oh, suppose I did."

He turns over the three of diamonds and flips over the next card, a third ace. He also flips over a ten and a five to complete the flop.

Deloris looks dejected, and checks. Clyde bets a Werther's and Mavis eyes him sharper than a spoke on an umbrella when it is close to someone's head, eventually calling the Werther's. Deloris folds.

Ernie flips over a 6.

"Gosh darnit to heck, Ernie!" Clyde says.

"What's the matter this time?"

Clyde sets down his cards, rubs his aged hands together, blows on them, and then holds them out over his cards as if the cards were a camp fire.

"... forgot to burn again, didn't I?" Ernie says knowingly.

Clyde nods.

Deloris snores.

Mavis stink-eyes the whole table and neighboring county.

Ernie flips back over the 6 and reveals an 8 as the true turn card.

Clyde eyes Mavis, who is staring directly back at him now.

"I hear you bought my grand daughter out of Thin Mints last week. Why not save some for the rest of us?" Clyde directs at Mavis.

Ernie smiles.

Mavis growls at Clyde.

"You know, Thin Mints have always been a favorite of mine." Clyde says.

"Put your money where your mouth is, you old coot!" Mavis chimes in.

"She speaks!" Clyde says playfully. "Well, okay, I bet three Thin Mints."

Mavis quickly calls.

Ernie starts to peel off the river card...

"Burn and turn!!" Clyde and Mavis both same simultaneously, as Mavis whaps Ernie's hand with the back of hers.

"Ouch! Okay, okay!"

Ernie burns a card and sheepishly places a four of clubs out on the board as the river.

Clyde looks at Mavis and then lowers his gaze to her plastic tray full of Thin Mints.

"How much you got there, young lady?"

"You have eyes, use em'"

Clyde smiles.

"Well, I suppose you've got more than me, so I'll just go ahead and bet all of mine..." he looks at Ernie, "All-in, in case there was any doubt, I may as well make it official."

Mavis checks her cards again, still two aces. She checks the board, and there is still an ace out there. A ten, an eight, a five and a four.

Mavis sits back in her chair.

First time she has been dealt aces in ages, and she doesn't feel good about it.

"Come on, sweet heart, we haven't got all day" Clyde ribs.

Mavis glowers at him.

"Well, she's got to have something, or else she wouldn't be thinking so long" Ernie chimes in.

"One would hope so, but I don't think she has anything at all, she just doesn't trust me." Clyde says. "Look honey, your queens are no good."

"Show me an ace and I'll fold" Mavis says.

"Now, now, I play by the rules, you know that." Clyde responds.

"Play by the rules, my ass!" Mavis snarls.

"Come on sweetie, call or fold." Clyde says.

Mavis attempts to disintegrate Clyde with her eyes, but her dream doesn't come true.

Mavis throws her aces into the muck.

Ernie and Clyde both gasp.

"Ah hah!" Mavis says as she leaps out of her seat. She grabs Clyde's hand and flips it over, six-seven.

"You dirty, rotten, no good scoundrel!" She directs at Clyde.

"And you! You rooster-clucking, no-good fish-eating moon-howling duck!" She directs at Ernie.

"Whoa there! You can't turn over my hand, you didn't call!" Clyde says.

"To heck, I can! You two cheaters are going to get cut off once Tony hears about this!"

Mavis hits the alarm button on her wheel chair. Within a minute, Tony is in the room and asks Mavis what the problem is.

"These two cheats are trying to take me for all of my Thin Mints! Look at the board, and look! Bowtie over there has six-seven and bet it the whole way, you don't play six-seven like that!" Mavis shouts.

Deloris wakes to the shout.

"Oh, hi Tony, didn't see you come in." Deloris says.

"Now Mrs. Goodell, you know this game has its moments, and you know Clyde plays off the cuff quite often." Tony responds.

"Bull shit cuff!" She responds.

"Even if Clyde has the nuts, how the hell did you fold aces there?" Ernie says.

Mavis smiles, for the first time in weeks.

"Now sonny, who told you I had aces?"

Jittery

I figure there isn't much point to try and name my posts counting up by 300 if I only post once or twice a month... kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "300+1 words a day" theme. The first three months of 2012 have flown by, as time is tending to do the older I get. Teaching has been and continues to be fun, but crazy. Having four different classes to prep for doesn't make for good teaching or a happy teacher. I find myself prepping lessons the morning of, and special ed. teachers trying to figure out what I am teaching so they can plan accordingly, but I haven't gotten the things together in time.

Big changes coming in June/July! Excited, but a little jittery.

306

Quite a few interesting things on my mind lately. I just got out of the hot tub and remembered a lot of conversations I've had with gf over the past few weeks. She is amazing, and particularly amazing at the way she can make me think about myself and do some self reflection. Last week she said that I am pretty hard on myself, which is something I had never really considered until she said it.

I think I am, and that is kind of weird to admit. I know through poker I've learned not to get angry on things outside of my control, so when that ace spikes on the river against my QQ v. AK all in preflop, I know it was a coinflip to begin with. It stings, I don't think anyone can deny that, but thinking you lost an 89% hand on the river, while technically you did, realistically it was a coin flip and you lost a 50% hand, big whoop.

I do get mad at myself when I play poker or any other game/sport poorly, and I had a good conversation with Tyler about this after racquetball this Wednesday. I told him how I was kind of laughing at myself and enjoying playing racquetball tonight, even though I was playing terribly. I had spoken with GF earlier in the week and said how I have a lot of fun at racquetball, but I've noticed that I am ALWAYS more chipper and talkative when I am ahead, and when I am losing I stop talking and focus on the game. This Wednesday I was down 0-8-9 playing cut-throat with William and Tyler, and I just kind of laughed at how poorly I was playing, instead of getting frustrated. I ended up losing 10-14-15 that game, and crushing them in the next game 15-4-2.

I was kind of surprised I made it to 10 in the first game, and I was just rolling in the second game, and I think my positive attitude had a lot to do with it. I also know how sucky it can be to play a sport or game with someone who is taking it too seriously, and I never really thought of myself as "that guy", but maybe I have been, and that is something I'd like to put an end to. I honestly don't care 90% of the time if I win a game, but I would like to play well.

Something about just sitting in the hot tub for 15-20 minutes is great for my creativity and productivity. I don't give myself enough empty time to think most days, I'm racing from school to video gaming so fast that I don't stop and think. Vow to think more outside of video game strategy or teaching! Two things I realized or re-realized tonight in the hot tub: 1) I am very happy teaching, I want to continue teaching regardless of where I am a year or two from now geographically; 2) I really love gf, and I want to make sure she knows this every day.

305

Writing is hard. It is hard to get the motivation to write, even though I think about it a handful of times a day. Some random thing will happen and I'll think "that would be a great start to a story" or "that would make a good blog topic", but when I sit down at a computer I run through my routine of email checking, Facebook, sports highlights, news and video games. Writing is about number 12 on my to do list when I sit down at my computer.

I'd rather be playing a video game right now, but my conscience has guilted me into writing because I haven't blogged for a while now. Hmm, what to write about... I guess Jeremy Lin is the hot topic of the week. The first Chinese-Taiwanese descendant to play in the NBA, who is averaging about 25 points in his first three games with significant playing time. He also happens to be the cousin of my junior and senior year roommate, Stan Lin! Great to see Jeremy getting playing time due to the Knicks injuries and taking advantage of the opportunity he's been given.

Speaking of basketball, I attended my third ever middle school basketball game (since I've become a teacher), and of the three games I've attended I have filled in as a referee once and on Monday I filled in as the timer. Ah, public school funding! I had a blast though, and only once made a mistake in my team's favor. I blew the horn when the coach of my school's girls team was screaming for a timeout and the refs weren't listening... so play stopped when the horn blew and the refs were forced to give her a timeout, hah! It wasn't too blatant though, because my team had the ball and they were just dribbling it up the court.

I had a really good conversation with the coach of the opposing boy's team, who was doing the scoring for the girl's game while I did the clock and horn. He's been coaching and teaching for a few years and has tiny aspirations to join the high school basketball coaching scene, but says it is very competitive. Middle school is very loose with sports in public school, which is nice, but it will be interesting to see where my teaching and coaching aspirations take me!

304

Well, I lost a back massage bet tonight. Fortunately it is to my beautiful girlfriend, and losing because we cleared 50% on a 172-team duplicate bridge tournament!!! We had a top hand for the first time in a few weeks, which is more due to the opponent's misplay than our superiority, but I must admit we did screw them pretty good on that third hand!

Just prior to the bridge tournament, girlfriend and I were working on a shared google-doc spreadsheet called "Bridge Cheat Sheet" which is the convention we'll be playing by, just American Standard. It is very simple right now, but I assume it will get more complex as we continue to play and run into situations that give us trouble. I was a bit worried about spending too much time during the tournament looking at the cheat sheet for what I should bid instead of playing quickly and having good etiquette, but during the tourney I only looked at the cheat sheet maybe once? The act of making the cheat sheet itself was a big help, kind of like the act of writing note cards to study for an exam helps just as much as quizzing yourself with the cards later.

We still ran into a few tough spots, but for the most part we played much better than last night (a 108/110 finish!). Only two of our hands were under 40%, which is pretty amazing considering almost all of our hands last night were under 40%! Marked improvement!! We talked about reviewing all of the hands we get under 20% on, but I may have to bump that up to 30% or 40% (in this case we only had two hands under 40%, but they were also below 20%...).

I think just continuing to play together and discussing our hands as they go will be the best way for us to improve, but if any of you bridge experts have any other suggestions, please let me know! I really enjoy the casual but involved play we are doing right now, and I am looking forward to fifty years from now and still playing this very fun and tricky card game!