Shaneese

On Friday night, I won two - yes, two - of the three rounds of Hold Em. (insert evil villain laugh. Sorry, I don't write it out like the Breadmaster) This amuses me because the boys - Bump and Peter - would argue that I am not a great poker player.

I admit I play by "feel." This means that even if my hand is questionable, if I'm "feeling it," I stay in. This manner of play bugs Bump and Peter. It bugs them a lot. It bugs them even more when I use this brilliant strategy to beat them. (insert evil villain laugh again)

So, what did this night of masterful card-playing yield? $35.00 of pure profit. Hoo-boy, am I a shark. The stakes are $5 per game, but it's more about pride than money, my friend. Okay, it's about money in the sense that Bump and Peter are stay-home dads, and Aunt Bob and I work on the Hill, so we're not exactly rolling in it; $5 stakes are plenty. Pride, though, pride we can play for. But you still gotta ante up. I'll make you cry and take your fie dallahs any day.

If I'm feeling it, that is.

--

When I was pregnant, poker was one of the few things other than work that I left the house to do. If I wasn't too cranky, Bump, Peter and Aunt Bob humored me by playing late into the night. Late enough that, when Peter's cell phone rang one night morning, we all feared the special kind of Very Bad News that tends to arrive at that hour. I was closest to to the phone, so I picked it up. The voice on the other end slurred, “Shaneese, I am so fucked up right now, you have no idea.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” I replied. “This isn’t Shaneese.”

The voice was suddenly crisp, polite. The slur was gone. “I’m so terribly sorry,” she said.

“No problem,” I assured her. “Good luck.”

We speculated for the rest of the night about Shaneese’s friend. She sounded like she was having a great time. We hoped she got laid or arrested or home safely, whichever she was shooting for. I felt a twinge of envy - not for the hangover she would have the next day - but I missed the days of drunk-dialing friends at 3:00 in the morning. I realized later that the people I would have called were - for the most part - sitting at the table with me.

But now, when someone has had too much to drink, we call her Shaneese.