A Gambling Story

As I was putting on this beautiful cat's-eye necklace today, I remembered that I bought it with the fruits of my single gambling experience and decided to share my gambling story with my readers.

On one of my trips to the Dominican Republic, a resort where we stayed offered all guests a promotional visit to a casino and a five-dollar coupon for the casino tokens. Since it was free and I'd never been to a casino in my entire life, I decided to use this opportunity to check it out. When I entered the casino and saw all the flashy, loud machines, I realized that I had no idea how one went about gambling. I chose one of the slot machines, put in a token and pressed a handle. Suddenly, the machine started flashing and making weird noises. Hundreds of token started falling out of it. Immediately, casino workers and patrons gathered around me and started clapping. I realized that I'd somehow broken the machine and felt completely mortified.

"I'm so sorry, I really am," I said to the casino workers. "I have no idea why it broke down. I didn't do anything to it, I think."

"No, this is good," a casino employee replied, looking at me with the kind of pity only reserved for especially dumb tourists. "You won, you just hit the jackpot on this machine. You can now exchange these tokens for money."

In order to make myself as scarce as possible, I moved to a corner where a penny-stake slot machine was hidden and started playing. In a little while, I was approached by an extremely drunk Spanish man.

"Say a number," he said while trying not to fall down.

"Eleven," I responded.

The guy left but soon came back again.

"Say a number," he said.

"Nineteen," I answered.

In a few minutes, he returned even drunker than before and reiterated his request for a number.

"Why are you asking me to say a number?" I inquired.

"I'm betting on the roulette over there," the guy explained as he was swaying wildly. "I already lost 1,500 euros on your numbers but I still have a lot of money." He got out a thick wad of euros and waved it around. "Say a number."

"I don't want to say a number and get you to lose even more money," I replied. "Where are your friends? Maybe we should go find them, huh?"

"I'm here with my girlfriend. She's asleep so I snuck out. She'll kill me when she finds out how much money I lost. Say a number."

"Three," I said in desperation and left the casino.

On the next morning, I was lying on the beach reading a book when the Spanish guy approached me.

"Hey," he said. "That was fun last night. I lost 3,200 euros. Let's do it again tonight. I'm planning to start betting big and I need you to give me the numbers."

"Why?" I asked. "Why do you want my numbers if you keep losing on them?"

Three thousand euros always seemed like a huge sum to me and I felt very guilty to have helped the guy to lose it so easily.

"Oh, I don't care about winning or losing," the guy responded. "I just enjoy the process."

I haven't been back to a casino since then but I bought this beautiful necklace with the money I won.

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