Have you ever been to a casino? It's a fascinating place to watch people lose not only their money, but their dignity, self-respect, common sense, and so on. This nearly happened to me and my cousin when we went with a group from the office to Atlantic City.
It was a fun trip, one of those packages, where you get 25 dollars in chips to play once you get to the casinos and free all-you-can-eat buffet lunch--what more could you ask? So on the bus trip over there we were a happy bunch--singing songs, and discussing what to do with all the money we surely would win.
When we arrived we made a beeline for the slot-machines, figuring this would be the best investment for the 25 dollars in chips.After all, if you hit the jackpot, you could win a decent amount of money. So me and my cousin picked two machines, got a bucket (for the coins, in case we hit the jackpot) and started playing.
But we didn't know that this was also the territory of countless little old ladies, who had "their" machines and would not let anyone else play these. We got into a big argument with one such old lady. It seems that she had staked out about ten slot machines in a row, and would not let us near them. After getting really nasty with her, and threatening to call the floor manager, she backed-off.
Soon we began to win money--aha! that's why she didn't want us to use these machines, they are lucky! Before we knew it, we had won about 100 dollars. You would think that at this point we would quit. But no...greed took over--and we started putting every quarter back--hoping to get an even bigger jackpot.
You may guess what happened next--we lost every single quarter we had, and were soon scrounging around on the floor, looking for any quarter someone might have dropped. Then, we came to our senses---what the heck are we doing? We blew the 100 dollars, let's not get ridiculous and lose our dignity, so we just laughed it off--and proceeded to the free all-you-can-eat buffet.
Hah! let's show them, we said, we'll just eat 100 dollars worth of food! We did so. And even though we had the most horrible stomach ache, we felt satisfaction, as we felt we had our revenge!
