Why I Have Not Indulged in Las Vegas or Atlantic City. Yet.
The short answer is: I like earning money. I also like to hold onto it for longer than an hour or two, whenever possible, and consider it to be “money that belongs to me” rather than “money that is temporarily being kept in my pocket.”
The shorter answer is: I plan suck at gambling. Still with me? Let me try to explain:
I knew I would be rubbish at the craps table when, as a nerdy teenager playing Dungeons & Dragons (please don’t tell anyone I admitted to that, I am pulling this confession straight out of my shame hole) I actually had to create a character whose sole point of existence was meant to entertain, as it was clear to everyone at the table that I could not only not kill any monsters, but I could barely hit them. My horrible dice rolls were the stuff of legends among my nerd peers, and characters that I created stayed alive, I believe, simply because I turned my miserable rolls into comedic displays of ineptitude, which forced the Dungeon Master to keep me alive through other means, simply to keep the group entertained.
It’s no surprise, then, that whenever I happen on some Hollywood film where the main character is shooting dice at the craps table, laying everything on the line for one important roll, I have an involuntary reaction that sounds something like AAAAAAAAAAHHHOOONOOOODON’TDOTHATWHATAREYOUTHINKING! I’d sooner take my chances on the legendary roulette wheel than take my fortune in my own dice-holding hands.
There’s another issue that keeps me from gambling – that I would be addicted to it straight away – because blackjack? That stupid card game is super fun and way too easy to get into. Blackjack is the soccer of card games, in that the same way all you really need to play soccer is a ball and another person, all you need to start playing blackjack is a full deck of cards and a warm body. Anyone can learn it, and we all think we are experts after awhile. I got my first taste of losing money at it during our honeymoon cruise around the Mediterranean, playing digital blackjack and losing many nickels in the comforts of international waters.
You read that right. I didn’t even have the nerve to play with warm blooded humans. It was just me and a machine.
AND I LOVED IT. Way, way too much…
So that, in a long winded nutshell, is why I have always turned down offers from friends headed to Vegas or Atlantic City. While it always sounds like it will be a blast, I just think of my next tech toy that money could buy, or how booze makes me do silly things, like scratch myself in public or head purposefully for the roulette table.
Now, Monte Carlo, that’s a different story. Monaco, are you listening? I WILL SPEND MONEY INSIDE OF YOOur gambling institutions.
photo by Images of Money