The Voice in the Casino

Discipline. That's what it's all about. Discipline.

I get the urge to go to the casino a couple of times a year. Typically I indulge it once. Yesterday was that day, I hope, anyway, for 2026.

There's a small casino in Hessel, in Michigan's glorious Upper Peninsula, just up the road a piece from our second home there. It isn't a very big gambling den. I've seen Seven Elevens that are larger in fact. But it's close by when we're in da U.P. and the small size has its charm. 

Typically I play video poker. I know the odds are in the house's favor with any type of gambling (me Pops always said that the winners didn't build the casinos), and perhaps I'm playing a stupid psychological trick on myself, but with poker I feel I have at least a modest amount more control over the game. I can choose what to hold and play hunches, for whatever tiny advantages those strategies may offer. With straight out slot machines, you just pull a lever (push a button these days) and hope.

My budget is twenty bucks. Once that's gone, I'm gone. You can play for as long as an hour on that if you're judicious, and have a bit of luck. Usually I quit when I'm 10-15 dollars behind. That's when I tell myself that this is stupid and cash out what's left.

Yesterday my $20 was gone in about five minutes. Sighing heavily, I thought, heck, I'm on vacation. I'll play another twenty. That's pretty much how the casinos want you to think I'm sure, and for whatever reason gullibility took over. I fed the machine another Jackson.

It was gone relatively soon, although I managed about 20 minutes of play that time around. Mildly upset at myself for losing forty bucks, I started to leave. "Put in another $20," the voice in my head told me.

"Why? I'm already down $40."

"Just put in another twenty," I was assured.

Half disgusted that I was allowing me to talk myself into something stupid, I gave the poker machine another greenback. I hit the draw button and was dealt four kings, a thirty dollar win at the level I was playing. That gave me a $49 credit. "Now cash out," that same voice told me.

I did. That left me 11 dollars down, within my usual loss range. 

You can play games at a casino, and you can listen to the voice in your head. But they each require discipline. That's the key.

Small and frail

I think the first time I thought me Mom might be getting sick was one day at the Hollywood Casino south of Toledo, Ohio. This was about two years after me Pops had went home.

I had to demonstrate a drain snake for the casino maintenance staff and she had always liked playing the slots. As she had not been to a casino since Dad passed away I figured I'd take her along. She would surely be entertained by the one armed bandits for the hour or hour and a half the demo would take. It would be a good diversion for her too.

The demo took a bit over an hour as expected. I took the unit I had just displayed out to my van and went back into the casino to find Mom. Yet instead of holding court at a slot machine (I expected it would take me a half hour just to find her as she liked to hunt for 'paying' machines), I spotted her right inside the entrance. She was sitting on a chair over against a wall, looking rather lonely and small. "I figured you'd still be playing," I remarked as I approached.

"Oh, I got bored so I thought I'd just sit here and wait for you."

"How long you been waiting?" I asked.

"About forty five minutes," she answered. That was most of the time I'd been occupied.

Admittedly a bit shocked I said, "I'm sorry, Mom, I didn't mean to leave you so long."

"Oh that's okay," she responded, sounding kind of like a 'don't worry about me' Mom. "You had work to do." It actually occurred to me right then and there that something might be wrong, but I quickly dismissed it as, well, she'd always went to casinos with Dad and it just wasn't the same without him being around.

And maybe that was all there was to it. But she looked so small and frail...

Mom and the one armed bandits

Me Mom used to like to pull the lever of the old one armed bandits with some regularity. Me Pops would take her to the various casinos, playing a few rounds of video poker typically, but he tended to tire of the games more quickly than she did. He would wait for her patiently after he was played out.

She liked to try new places. Once while me Pops was on a sales trip and she rode along, they stopped for a bite in Chester, West Virginia, up in that state's thin panhandle. Noticing they weren't from the area the waitress asked conversationally, "So are you folks going to try the new casino up the road?"

"We are now," me Pops responded with a wry laugh.

Me Mom, Lord love her, always expected that this trip was the one where she was going to hit it big. Wherever they were at, she firmly believed that it was her time, right then, to win the big jackpot. It was kind of sad to see her afterwards, when she invariably lost and was honestly and obviously dismayed she wasn't leaving the betting parlor as a millionaire.

Pops was always more retrospect. "The winners didn't build the casinos," he'd say.

True enough. Still, I would have loved to see Mom win big once. And for more than my own nefarious reasons too, wise guy.