Chalk Is for You
Lou made everyone chalk before every shot. It took me forty years to learn why.
A man named Lou taught me to chalk a cue. I was nineteen, hustling my way across Ohio, and I thought chalk was for amateurs. Lou ran a hall in Dayton, and he had one rule for anybody on his tables. Before every shot, you chalk. Needed it or not.
I asked him why. He said, "The chalk is for you, not the cue." I did not understand him. I do now.
Lou told me what he watched for. A man about to make a bad decision gets quick. His hands speed up, his talk speeds up, and he starts shooting before he has finished looking. Lou said he could spot it from the register. He said the shot was not lost when the ball missed. It was lost in the half second before, when the man decided he was done thinking.
I did not take that to heart. For forty years, every worst thing I did came wrapped in hurry. The extra bet, the second trip, the loan I took before the sun was up. Not one of them was a plan. Each was a feeling that wanted out of me before I could look at it.
In recovery I learned the feeling is not the problem. It is allowed. The trouble is how fast it travels from wanting to doing, and how seldom I gave it a chair to sit in while it passed. Lou's chalk was a chair. A few seconds with my hands busy and my eyes up, and the urge had to wait its turn. Some urges left. Some stayed, and I could look at them, and they were smaller than they felt.
You do not need chalk. You need something that slows you for the length of one breath, and a person to call when a breath is not enough. The National Problem Gambling Helpline is 1-800-MY-RESET, and 988 if the night gets darker than that.
The urge is fast. You don't have to be.
Sal
Gambling harm usually starts with speed, a feeling that travels from wanting to doing before there is time to look at it. A few seconds of deliberate pause gives an urge room to pass, and help is available at 1-800-MY-RESET.