I like to play it safe. I am not a risk taker. If someone asked me, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” I would have to answer, “No sir, not really.”
I have been this way as long as I can remember. My grandmother’s husband used to buy lottery tickets every week, and by the third grade I had concluded that since he was not yet a millionaire, the lottery was not a good plan. It was clear that if he had put those $5 a week in an interest-bearing back account, in a few short decades he would have been better off than playing “Scratch and Win.” My sound reasoning, however, was not heeded.
That’s why I was absolutely not going to go to a casino with my friend Thomas. Even though I didn’t know how to spell “baccarat,” I knew that the house always wins. Watching Ocean’s Eleven was almost too intense for me; I knew I couldn’t handle the real thing (and by real thing I mean gambling, not trying to rob a casino).
But he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: He would give me $100 to play with. It wasn’t my money, so I couldn’t feel bad about losing it. I technically didn’t even have to spend it. I could sit in the corner and read, and then keep my $100. I just had to go with him. “What else are you going to do anyway?” he asked.
Good point. I decided to go.
Currently, I am living in Pensacola, Fla. until I go abroad to Chile for the semester. This puts me in a unique position to gamble for three reasons: 1. I currently do nothing; 2. Thomas lives in Pensacola and happens to really like to gamble; 3. I live a little over two hours away from Bixoli, Miss. where gambling is legal.
We decide to go on a Sunday, to give a nice ironic foil to our heathen pastime. On the way we decide to stop and get some lunch off of the interstate. I wanted to go to a Subway. We walk in the door, and he remembers that he once lost after eating lunch at a Subway, and refuses to sit down. We relocate to a Waffle House to have a non-jinxed breakfast and continue to Biloxi.
The first strange thing about Biloxi is that it is in middle-of-nowhere Mississippi (as opposed to the numerous, bustling metropolises of Mississippi), yet for some reason thousands of people come here to gamble. We drove over swamps, passed some boiled peanut vendors and pawn shops and ended up in a sea of high-rise resort casinos. Thomas wanted to go to one called the Beau Rivage, because “it was actually sort of clean.” I started to reconsider the whole plan, wondering how many CDs $100 would buy me, and then, against my better judgment, went inside anyway.
The resort was actually fairly pretty. We passed some shops and an arcade, and I was relieved to know that I could at least leave the casino to play a decent game of Skee-Ball if things got to be a little too hectic for me. A man stood at the entrance to the casino by a sign that read, “One must be at least 21 years of age to gamble.” I began to take out my ID until the man said, “You 21? Sure you are! You look 27!” Thomas replied, “Well, she’s actually 17, but we’ve got money to spend,” but the man was already back to strictly enforcing statutory neglect and we continued on.
In the center of the casino were tables to play blackjack, craps, baccarat and some other games I had never heard of. Around the center were hundreds of slot machines, with different types of themes, such as Wheel of Fortune, South Park and one with a lot of monkeys. There was one with a Jeopardy theme, which I hoped would be an electronic quiz game, but no such luck. I decided to sit down at a nickel slot machine until I figured out how the games worked. I finally deciphered that you had to get so many of certain pictures in different kinds of rows, but it seemed way more complicated that anything I had ever seen on TV. Thomas found me and started yelling at me for being a wuss and sitting at the nickel slot machines. He dragged me over to the blackjack table and made me sit down. The minimum was $5, and he gave me one chip, mandating that I at least try it once.
A funny thing happened. I started to win. Most of the time I didn’t even have to think about it. There seemed to be some sort of magic connection between the dealer Nelson and me, where I just kept sitting there and he just kept dealing me 21s. Sure, Nelson looked as though he had taken about 10 Xanex before he came to deal and was really slow, but I wasn’t going to complain. I was winning! I was a blackjack genius!
After I won $110, I got up from the table, but Thomas wanted to play craps. I recalled my father’s tale of losing $40 in about 10 seconds at a craps table about 25 years ago, and my old, non-risk-taking self came back. I wasn’t going to play. I would sit with my 30 $5 chips and wait for him to finish. He left and I waited, but I couldn’t just stand there. Not with the blackjack table and Nelson waiting just a few short feet away. Hey, I had won all that money with a solitary $5 chip. I could do it again! I was a blackjack genius!
Within five minutes I was back down to $80. I resigned myself to being fortune’s fool, and told myself it didn’t really matter because it was never my money anyway. I was getting kind of nauseous. I wanted that money back. After about 10 more minutes I was back up to $100 and bolted from the table. I grabbed Thomas and made him go cash out with me. I gave him his $100 back, which he wisely put back in his wallet, which he made me put in my purse. He took out $20 and said he wanted to play a little more, but that no matter how much he begged, I was not to give him his wallet back until we were out of the building.
Of course, we lost the $20. But, we had come out on top. I personally netted $100. The house didn’t win, but only because we did not stay there long enough. I hate to admit it, but it was actually kind of fun, if I ignore the fact that I was so nervous that I twitched the entire time I was there.
I’m not saying I’m a changed person, but if I was asked, “Do you feel lucky, punk?” I might just say, “Hit me.”
