Fight Club

My recipe for a personal meltdown:

Take one 4-year-old
Add six pounds of candy
A pinch of ultra-permissive Grandma
and Two Responsible Parents who would like everyone to enjoy a nice pasta-flavored dinner before we start mainlining sugar.

What you get is a Tantrum For The Ages, the likes of which my world has never seen, all over a chocolate Tootsie Pop, which is easily the worst flavor and not by a little bit.

Ah well, nothing a good beatin' didn't fix.

AJ went as Darth Vader, which is a little disappointing. I wanted to buy him a mullet wig and send him out as Joe Dirt, because it's much funnier to me and it IS all about me. Actually, he wanted to be Nigel and I thought that was a cool costume. Who's Nigel, you ask? Nigel is the dashing hero/narrator of the BBC's "Walking with Dinosaurs" (quick aside, I had a table captain in my $20 two-table SnG last night with BBC in his name and like most All Knowing Table Captains he had no idea what he was talking about, but he also went so far as to challenge another player to "check his results in thepokerdb.com." well, a bold bluff sir, since he was not listed at all; no, I didn't cash. I did enjoy being sucked out on a 3-outer).

ANYWAY, AJ watches that DVD regularly enough that he has memorized much of the dialogue. Did I mention it's 6-hours long? But yeah, Nigel was a cool costume, kinda like an Indiana Jones character. But you get a kid into the costume store and all they see is mind-bending marketing and bright colors at child's eye level and all of a sudden he's Darth Vader with a cheap mask and a cheaper cape. Boring.

The best treat he got--and I mean "best" as in worst--was a mini bag of popcorn with political advertising on it. Are you kidding me? Why don't you dickwads just go trick or treating yourself as a campaign sign? Maybe invite my kid in for a little socialist indoctrination? If I ever find out who did this, they will be advertising the outline of my fist on their cheek.

Oh, I'm all worked up. Sexy, idn't it?

I should probably mention I can't fight. I've been in a couple and they usually ended up with me being saved by people who liked me. I once got jumped at a backyard party. There was some live music--punkish--and the whole joint just had a bad vibe about it, a fact that was totally confirmed when I impetuously--though correctly--called a guy a "fuckin' idiot." He seemed to accept this keen insight, until a few seconds later when he landed a chickenshit haymaker to the back of my skull. What happened next is something you really only see in your better prison movies. A bunch of people just jumped on me and began to pound the shit out of me. Just random people. Hey! That guy's vulnerable, let's kill him. Blows were raining down on me from every direction. I was bent at the waist, hands covering my head as best I could and my only thought was "stay on your feet." I managed to do that long enough for my friends to notice it was I at the center of this Evil Storm. I heard Kool Breeze recognize my plight. Sweetest sound I ever heard. They literally began pulling people off me and hustled me into the alley. My face hurt for quite a while.

The first fight I was ever in was in 8th grade. A classmate had gotten on my nerves one too many times and I challenged him to a duel. After school. At the Softball Field. Typical school boy crap. I'd never been taught how to fight and it also never occurred to me, though it seems obvious, that I shouldn't try my hand with a guy who out-weighed me by 40 pounds, but that's what I did. He quickly got me in a submissive position as the crowd inevitably swelled. He popped me once in the nose while he had me in a headlock. Just once. Certainly he had plenty of time to jackhammer a few more in there, but he was benevolent. Me? I was wounded, mostly my pride, and with the gathering masses, felt I had to exert some sort of machismo to save face, leading to the classic line,

"If you let me up Steinhauer, I'm gonna kick your ass!"

Beautiful.

Funny thing is, I ran into Mr. Steinhauer at the reunion. I figured he was coming based on the RSVP list and I had no qualms about seeing him. In fact, I told the dear and patient wife all about the episode and that I planned to thank him for teaching me a good lesson early on in life: That I should not fight.

So I see him at the reunion, heartily shake his hand and introduce him to the Mrs. mentioning our 8th grade showdown. I move away to buy some drinks and he ends up telling her that I WON the fight, unaware she knew the truth. A simple gesture, even a silly one, but it was pretty cool. He was one of the consistently gregarious and entertaining people at the reunion, where I did get some satisfaction out of small things, like that.

Okay one more and then no more walks down past violent lanes. Another guy at the reunion, Swaff, was something of a bully. He had an off-and-on role as my tormenter, but I still always liked him. In fact, would give him a ride to school if I passed him on the way. Mostly, it was just teasing, but it occasionally got physical, not with punches, but, for example, rolling me up in a wrestling mat at PE and then jumping on top of me. The only time I ever recall him really hurting me was once when he cracked me in the small of the back with a book or a binder or something.

ANYWAY, Swaff was at the reunion and I introduced him to the wife thusly, "This is Swaff, he used to beat me up a lot." I said it jokingly, with a smile on my face and he got a kick out of it, cackling deep in his throat and replying, "Well, I think we've all grown past that now."

It was REALLY funny.

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I coulda wrote about poker today, but it woulda been short. Played the aforementioned SnG where I finished 8th after getting screwed on two of my bigger hands. Also played the $6K Guaranteed on Full Tilt...for 15 minutes. In the BB, I caught wired sevens. UTG had limped along with a VERY loose lemur in the CO and SB completed. Flop came AJ7 with two hearts. Lovely. I bet half the pot (80), not making a big display of my wonderful little set. UTG pops it to 400 and loose lemur calls.

Huh?

Well, let's run this down. Loose lemur I immediately put on the heart draw. Next? UTG...limped with Aces? No. Limped with JJ? I can't imagine. AJ? Sure, I could see that. I could even see AK, because I HAVE seen it a lot lately. I've got the third nuts. What am I afraid of? UTG clearly has AJ! With nearly 1200 in the pot already and my stack at 1500, I push, getting heart draw to commit all his chips if he wants to draw. Both call.

UTG has JJ and dodges the heart draw (which wasn't even the nut heart draw as I'm sure you expected).

Thanks, everybody! That was fun! I've been trying to figure where I went wrong. If I could have gotten away from this hand. UTG certainly showed strength with his flop bet. Even if I just call, I'm going broke. I didn't think I needed to improve to win. I just made my read and played based on it. I was wrong. I could have given him more credit, but it's hard to see set over set, especially considering the unlikelihood of EP limping with JJ.

I dunno. Am I wrong?