When I was young, I didn’t notice it, and as I got older, I realized my mind works differently than those around me. I will be sixty-four in June which started my thoughts towards retiring. I will soon get hip replacement surgery and my hope is that the lack of pain will release my mind to write. My thoughts transitioned from retirement to why I never gamble.
I started working when I was ten years old. I had what no kid has today, a paper route. Imagine at ten, I needed to pay the newspaper company for the papers they delivered to the street corner. Then, I delivered the papers and had to collect payment from my customers. It paid to smile and be nice because anything I collected over and above the cost of papers was my pay. Capitalism at its best. Could you imagine that today.
More to why I never gamble. I grew up in a tough blue collar steel town and when I was young, I had no fear of almost anything. Whether it was a dare to “surf” on a moving car hood or a fist fight, I never backed down. Looking back maybe I was too stupid to know. In middle school I was approached by someone from my paper route, it was the local bookie. At thirteen I started to run football tickets for the bookie. It was a lot of money for a thirteen-year-old and the reason I was chosen was because the teachers at my school were my best customers. Among teachers I was very popular. Of course, there were plenty of kids that used their lunch money to bet. The tickets had a list of college and pro games with the spread. The most common bet was a dollar for each card and the person would select four teams, if you won all four you got ten dollars for each dollar bet. Now it’s called Draft Kings.
You would think that seeing what happened to a few folks who got in over their heads betting with the bookie would have been the thing to be the deterrent to not gamble, sorry I’m not that smart. What stopped me from gambling was what happened at a party at the bookie’s place. If I had any sense or an ounce of caution I should not have been there. At the party there was a lot that you would expect in the mid-seventies. A green haze of weed hovered against the ceiling, other drugs as well and lots of alcohol. The bookie was at a table playing poker with some folks looking back I should have feared. Again, I’m not that bright. There was a lot of money on the table, more than a poor kid like me has ever seen. The bookie got to drunk or high to play and told me to play his spot until he got back.
Growing up I played plenty of poker on the street, always nickel and dime. I was very good; I had a natural ability to count cards. We also used to pitch coins against a staircase as well, which I did very well. Once at the beach I won so any glasses as a stand, by pitching dimes into them that the place banned me, but that is a different story.
I sit at the table and bets at going from twenty bucks to a hundred. For once I was scared, it was the first time I thought of my death. I thought if I lost a thousand or more of the bookie’s money what would happen to me. I was so focused, and I have to say I played my ass off. A couple of hours later I added a little over five-hundred dollars to the bookie’s pile. The bookie came back and gave me forty bucks for winning. The experience scared me, to this day I don’t gamble.
When I was in high school after I stopped running tickets the bookie was arrested for killing someone in his house. It didn’t surprise me, never bet more than you have or more than you can afford.
Mike Settino 