Never Go All in Against a Witch

Some of the grandkids were over today to complete my transformation into a beached whale.  More food appeared from heaven knows where and eggnog and desserts rounded out the meal.  And after some talk of this and that we got down to a high stakes game of Texas hold ’em.  The game was played completely for pride with no cash changing hands.  The chips were divvied up and play went on for hours with fortunes waning and waxing almost at random.  All except Camera Girl.  She is not only a canny bettor but also possesses supernatural luck.  And finally, it came down to her and me.  I was holding a pair of aces and the flop was nothing to write home about.  She and I were betting very heavily.  On the turn an ace showed up.  The final card was a second queen.  We had put most of our chips in the pot and I went all in.  I showed her my two aces and she showed me her pair of queens.  Four of a kind!  I accused her of witchcraft and spent the rest of the game railing at her from the sidelines.

Luckily coffee was served shortly after the game was over and I could gracefully move on from my somewhat unsportsmanlike behavior to my more dignified pose as pater familia and patriarch of a great nation.  All question of who beat whom in a meaningless game of chance was left behind and more important matters took center stage.  Discussions about which were the best Christmas toys or gifts were spirited.  The remote-controlled planes seemed to be the people’s choice.  I watched some cellphone video of these battery powered wonders buzzing the neighborhood at remarkable speed and surprising acrobatic agility.  The remarkable thing was how they survived the crashes I witnessed into the ground and trees.  It seems the drone revolution has reached the adolescent fraction of the American population and it is being enthusiastically embraced.  I was happy to see that these flying wonders did not include munitions of even the mock variety.  A small victory for world peace.

Tomorrow is work.  But I’m hoping it will be a short week and I’ll be able to extend the family fun a while longer while the kids are still off from school next week.  It’s heartening to see that simple games and food can still serve as an adequate excuse for fun.  No video games were played.  We even left the television off.  Sibling rivalry and parental scolding were not absent and some folks were too drowsy from food to avoid snoozing on recliners but for the most part the generations showed sufficient tolerance for each other to bridge the boomer/millennial/zoomer chasms of culture and conditioning.  And even that most fraught relationship, father-in-law/son-in-law was carried through with mutual regard and tolerance.  Having now been on both sides of that relationship I have equal respect for both partners in that arrangement.  It’s a strange but important set of rituals that bind up families and benefit everyone.  But for grown men it will always be a somewhat awkward interaction.  Luckily the wives and daughters can help to smooth out and buffer the whole dance.

I was thinking of writing something about the H-1B visa squabble going on.  But I’ll leave that up to various talking heads to battle it out.  Trump should be smart enough to figure out which way the wind blows on immigration, legal and illegal.  If he can’t figure it out, he’s not going to have a very productive presidency.  Instead, I’ll spend a little more time calculating the odds of getting a four of a kind in a Texas hold ‘em hand.  Now that’s an important question.