Hi, I posted a lot of my story in another section. That dealt mainly w/ the trucking aspect of things though. Ya didn't want me to be shy, so get ready for a book. =)
What I'd add to that is my dream was to be an NHL hockey player. I played up thru my first year of college. Check that, I played up thru high school & then sat the bench in college. Actually, I sat the bench for a team that was either a JV or club level team. (we'd play the JV teams of the big boys if they had one) I realized at about age 13 or so when we went to a tournament in Toronto that the odds of me going pro were slim. We were a first place team in our league, played a 6th place team in a TO league (the host team) & got blown out by a score of 15-1. (might have been 17-1, I'm kinda tryin to forget) =)
I remember our coach coming into the locker room & sayin "boys, we were just outcoached today." I really admire him to this day for saying that, but we had to face facts. Those nifty passes we got away w/ back home were intercepted & by them & ended up in our net. Plus, another strange thing was happening. The whole game was pretty much played in our end. Those guys were simply better than we were. Simple math told me "ok, they're in 6th place & every guy on that team is better than I am". That meant 90 guys in that league were prolly better than I was & that was in just one league.
I still kept the dream alive, but as ya get a bit older ya start realizing that other players are simply better. I learned to fight, hoping that maybe it would be a way into the league, but even then you've got to have SOME talent. By that I mean NHL talent. If I lost a leg I could still go ice skating. I have excellent balance. I can shoot the puck from one end of the ice to another. If any of ya's ever watch that score-o thing they do in intermissions, where they shoot a puck from center ice into a little hole in a board they place in front of the net, I'm 3 out of 11 on that & 7 of the others were pretty close.
Yea, a lil braggin there (kickin back like Al Bundy might do) =) The reality though, is by pro hockey standards, I stunk. Even by less than pro standards I wasn't very good. I guess the best way to describe my hockey skills is I was one of those pretty good high school players who got filtered out in college. PS: with rare exceptions (Mike Knuble being the only one I know of) if ya play high school hockey in Michigan, you won't be a pro. You've GOT to play junior hockey.
Alongside my hockey dreams I got into backgammon. By time I was 16 or 17, I was gambling for small amounts of money. By this I mean $50 or less. I was doing ok for myself, & as a kid at that age even having $20 is a rush. That in itself came in handy when I went to college. I got into some poker games, & even though I didn't understand the game, I'd already had experience w/ winning or losing $40 or what have ya. Some of these kids would be visibly shaking when the pots got to be a decent size.
We'd have poker parties pretty much every nite of the week. I pretty much spent every other semester on academic probation, but I didn't care. I was winning BIG at this game. I had this lil car & every day I'd put 3 kids in there at the end of the game (this was like 8 or 9AM usually, like I said we'd play all nite) & drive em to the plasma center so they could donate blood to pay off some of their tab.
One guy named Brad owed me so much that the joke was he was gonna have to donate a kidney to pay me off. I knew he was never going to, so w/ him I'd do things like let him buy the pizza & take $100 off what he owed. I only played poker for one year at this place, because when I didn't make the hockey team my 2nd year, I knew I had zero chance at an NHL career. Therefore I dropped out.
I still enjoyed gambling though & kept playing backgammon. I got a car out of it. I didn't win the car in one session. It was a case of I won enough every month to pay for it. Still, if you want to accomplish anything major in backgammon, you've got be among the VERY best at the game or have a personal fish. At one time I was ranked in the top 400 or so in the world, but only the top 20 or so (except those who had a sucker to play with) were making any kind of a decent living at it.
A friend in backgammon turned me onto blackjack. I learned to count cards & was pretty decent at it. The thing is though, if you're any good at it most casinos don't want ya there. I found a small casino that didn't seem to mind me playing from $2-$25 & that was fine, because that was about my comfort level anyways.
One thing I liked about this casino was ya ended up knowing a lot of the regulars. 2 friends & I got to be known as pretty good players there. I can't tell ya how many times someone would ask for advice on playing a hand. This was obviously good for the ego. Of course, if they lost ya didn't feel so good. What I did in those cases was to basically tell the person "some times you make a play to win more money, & sometimes you make a play to lose less money.. having said that, here's the right play".
I remember one time when I was at 3rd base. I took a card, which turned out to be the dealers bust card. We lost. This guy made some kind of comment about my poor play. This lady stood up & SCREAMED at him: "LOOK!! THIS GUY IS THE BEST PLAYER IN HERE!! IT MAY NOT HAVE WORKED, BUT IF HE MADE THE PLAY IT WAS THE RIGHT ONE!!".. That lil episode put a smile on my face, cept for the fact that I lost the hand of course.
While playing blackjack, I met these two guys who always came to the table w/ huge stacks of chips. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me because these guys were brutal at the game. The first time I figured it was just dumb luck, but the law of averages should catch up w/ em sooner or later. I liked em & wasn't going to ask em "how do people who play as lousy as you have all these chips all the time?" but I definately wanted to know what was going on.
I couldn't imagine em cheating because they didn't seem like the type. Then again ya never know. Finally I felt I'd gotten to know em well enough to ask what their secret was. What they told me had a pretty big impact on me. They said "oh, we didn't win this at blackjack, we won it at poker & just come to the blackjack table to spend a few dollars & relax b4 we go home".. Now to me, this made PERFECT sense. I thought back to my days in college & thought I'd give poker a try again.
The next time I went to the casino I played poker rather than blackjack. I won $180, but I also knew that was more luck than skill. I could tell that the players were better than me. Just "vibes" that ya get or something. Sure enough, I was right. My next 9 or 10 sessions I dropped over a grand. Still, I could sense that while these people were better at this specific game (Texas Hold em) than I was, it was only a matter of time b4 I'd be better. Sure enough, I was right on that account also. That's the year I made the $18,000 I alluded to in my other post.
Well, if you're interested, ya can read the rest of my story in Terry & Rene's "Why Leave Now" post. Otherwise, thanx for staying w/ me this long.
Be well,
Danny
