Let It Stop

A boy named Nate came in last Saturday and broke the rack before the cue ball had finished rolling back from his last shot. Balls were still moving. He did not care. He sank nothing, scratched twice, and swore at a table that had done nothing but sit there.

"Hold on," I said. "Nobody is chasing you. Let it stop." He rolled his eyes the way nineteen is entitled to. But he waited, and the next shot, the only one he took slow, dropped clean.

I have thought about that boy all week, because he is me at nineteen, and at forty, and some at sixty. In a hall outside Tulsa a man in a good hat once leaned over my shoulder at midnight and said the offer was good only until I finished my drink. Right now or never, he said. I said yes before the glass touched the bar. I lost a month of earnings by closing time and spent the next week telling myself it had been a decision. It was not. It was a flinch.

Here is what forty years taught me. Every bad bet I ever made came with a clock attached. Now or never. Last chance. Before it changes. The clock was never there for my benefit. A thing that is truly good for you can survive a night's sleep, and a thing that cannot is usually working on somebody else's behalf.

I am not offering a trick, only an old man's observation. When the urge shows up in a hurry, the hurry is the warning. The ball will still be there when it stops rolling.

Nate came back Sunday and racked the table for me without being asked. He shot slow all afternoon. He still lost to me, which at eighty-four I count as a public service.

If the hurry feels bigger than you, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET, any hour.

Let the ball stop.

Sal