For 4 generations, my family’s company has made the best darts and dartboards in the entire world.
I was hoping that my son would carry on the family tradition, but he’d rather throw darts in the pubs and drink than run the company.
So, while he threw away his future in the pub, I was out looking for a buyer.
Eventually, I got an offer from a big gaming company that ran their divisions separately, and I felt they’d maintain the quality that our name stands for.
As for my son, he’s a bartender now.
But I never drink with strangers.
Category: My stories
Addict
When you’re an addict in Vegas, you need to be a little bit more specific about “going to see your dealer.”
Are you looking to score some coke or heroin, or do you have a table at the casino?
Maybe your dealer is your dealer, and you’re scoring drugs at the table.
This is a really dumb thing to do, because there’s the pit boss, watching over everything, and the cameras watching what they don’t spot.
It’s one thing to comp a customer free drinks, as long as the cash goes to the casino, and not into the dealer’s pocket.
Tea Time
It doesn’t take long to make a fresh pitcher of iced tea.
I strip 8 teabags from their packages, drop them into a pitcher, and then put a kettle of water on the stove.
Turning the dial to High, I walk into the living room and sit for a while.
I guess this is the superstitious part of me, not watching a pot because a watched pot never boils.
I wait 5 minutes… 10 minutes… 15 minutes…
No whistle yet?
I go back into the kitchen.
Great. I turned on the wrong burner.
I guess those pots don’t boil either.
Choice
It’s not easy for a person to cook with their arm in a sling.
Visions of setting my left arm on fire convince me to stick with simple foods, like carrots and hummus.
Yogurt, too.
But I find myself unable to choose from the many flavors in our refrigerator. The pain meds make it hard to make arbitrary decisions like this.
I stand there, confused, and getting hungrier… hungrier…
I reach out and freeze.
“Close your eyes,” a voice says.
So, I do.
And I pull out a yogurt! Success!
Uh oh.
Now I need to pick out a spoon.
Paper or Plaster
Every time I go grocery shopping, it’s the same damn question:
“Paper or plastic?”
Plastic’s good for putting the scooped-out clumps of kitty litter into.
But the kitties like to play in the paper bags.
In the end, I settled on paper. The baskets on my bike are large enough for one paper bag each.
The one time I got plastic, I couldn’t fit all the bags into the baskets.
With one bag dangling from my right hand, I fell and broke my left arm.
I use a plastic bag to keep the cast dry in the shower.
Memory Of Jasmine
I love to light incense.
The more aromatic it is, the better.
I watch it twist and curl into the air, spreading trails in an alphabet only known to the gods and the mad fools who follow them.
Today, I light a stick of jasmine, and I can remember when our fence was covered with vines and white star blossoms.
The red tip glows brightly, consuming the incense slowly, dropping ash into the groove of the wooden holder.
And then, the tip goes dark.
The smoke trails vanish, and I’m left with the memory and scent of tiny white flowers.
The Cruelest Puzzle
Vindal Mumford was a famous puzzlemaker, so it was no surprise that his will was in the form of an intricate puzzlebox with no apparent solution.
Experts examined the box for weeks, twisting and turning it and subjecting it to x-rays and other modern scanning technology.
But the box was still impenetrable and unsolvable.
Weeks… months… years went by, but no solution to the puzzle was ever found.
Not that Vindal left anything to be won by the solver of his final puzzle.
There’s not much money in creating problems without solutions, you know.
(Unless you’re a politician, of course.)
Perfect Timing
I stuffed my arm back into its sling, walked out of the physical therapist’s office, and crossed the street to the theater.
Looper had already started, but the box office girl said there were twenty minutes of previews.
I bought a ticket, the doorman tore it in half, and he checked my bag for weapons.
“Just drugs,” I said. “Painkillers.”
There was no way I could carry my large soda and popcorn myself.
“Jeremy,” I said, reading the boy’s nametag. “Got a minute to help me to my seat?”
He carried my drink, I thanked him, and the movie began.
Open For Dinner
I wanted some chicken in my vegetables, so I pulled out a can of chicken and fumbled with the can opener in my one good hand.
I can’t close it and turn the handle at the same time.
And wishing I had an electric can opener doesn’t do squat for me right now.
So, I use the can opener to rip around the lid, taking five minutes to get it open.
Then, I poked a fork into the lid, prying it off.
And dropping the can on the floor.
Chicken… everywhere…
“Dinner,” I call to the cats, eating my vegetables.
One or Zero
The pain scale goes from zero to ten.
At zero, you feel no pain or discomfort.
At ten, that’s all you feel.
It’s not easy, coming up with an objective measure for a subjective experience like pain, but when you’re in pain, you’ll come up with a number pretty damn quick.
There were times in the hospital when I was rolling around in agony, calling for the nurse to bring me pain pills.
You don’t calmly say nine. You growl it, you whimper it, or you scream it.
Then, relief comes… slowly…
One and zero never felt so damned good.