Patio, Garden and Home Info

For a while now, I have looked for a way to get all my friends together every week to hang out and catch up with each other. We tried having a pool night, but that didn’t work. My friend Mike, hates pool. He is notoriously clumsy and nearsighted, and cannot hit a ball to save his life. We couldn’t come up with a movie night, because we couldn’t all agree on movies. Finally, we decided to have a poker night. Although none of us are big gamblers or even big card players, nonetheless we thought it was a good social occasion. We would all get together, have a few drinks around the poker table, and catch up on the week’s happenings.

I went down in the basement and found all my poker supplies. I had a poker chip set and a folding poker table that was ancient. It had been in the family since I was a kid. It was my dad’s poker table. I remember sitting at it when I was a child, watching all the men sit there with serious faces, staring at their cards. It had been in the family for even longer than that, I suspected.

There are stains all over the table and dents in the legs. For a moment, I contemplated getting throwing away this old poker table, since I knew that folding poker tables are pretty cheap. Nonetheless, I always loathe to getting rid of something that still works and it does has history with my family, so I decided to keep it.

My friend Sam actually commented on my poker table on the first night. He is a notorious neat freak, completely anal-retentive and grossed out by anything that is the slightest bit out of order. When he saw the cracks and stains on the folding poker table, he looked downright squeamish. I didn’t care. I thought that if my table had him rattled, so much the better.

You see, Sam is a mathematical genius. I expected him to be great at cards because he is great at anything that involves mathematical reasoning. Nonetheless, when we sat down in the chairs and dealt a few hands, it became clear that Sam could not hold his own. Although he probably understood cards in theory, when it came down to the actual game he could not think clearly. I ended up as the big winner that night.

To be fair, I think I will pick up a new folding poker table before our next poker night.