My First Time Gambling
We entered Gulfstream Park Racing and Casino, and were immediately assaulted by old people. Everywhere you looked, wheelchairs, steel walkers, wooden canes, khaki dress shorts with brown leather belts, short-sleeved collars shirts, penny loafers, and wrinkled smiling faces with just a hint of sadness were all that the eye could see. With the possible exception of some of the employees, Dad and I were the only people not past retirement age.
We were there for neither business nor pleasure. Dad wanted to teach me a lesson. He wanted to show me that gambling does not pay, and is, in fact, nothing but a futile exercise in frustration and fiscal irresponsibly. He wanted me to see that good luck was finite, and taking me to the slots would surely prove this.
We waded through the mass of old perfume and lives wasted until we got to the slot machines. They sat in a corner of the large room, against the aquamarine painted wall, on the aquamarine carpet. Lit up like video games at an arcade, the machines sang and cranked and their lights danced and twinkled, as senior citizens gambled away their social security money.
We sat down at the biggest, prettiest one that wasn’t occupied. Dad took out a twenty dollar bill, with the intention of sacrificing it for the sake of his oldest child’s moral growth, and inserted it into the machine.
