Thursday, January 21, 2010

Listen to Lady Luck

Elizabeth is loosely regarded as a kind of Lady Luck. Any event can be improved by her presence, and a new experience is always an adventure. So, on an occasion with a few semi-intoxicated friends at the local casino, she was along for the ride.

My sister is a lovely, elegant, mildly exotic-looking young lady. She's in the minority for this (especially at the casino), and attracts a fair amount of attention. Some of her friends insisted on having her beside them as they played, and she's a quick learner. Before too long, she managed to win a bit more than they'd started with.

One gentleman, a businessman outside her acquaintance, invited her to sit with him, and he kept turning to her for advice on how he should play the next round. You are my Lady Luck, he says. With her beside him, he turns $600 into well over $3000.

He realizes this, and then asks her once again what he should do.

My sister is startled at this turn of events, because she apologized before every bit of advice before, explaining that she didn't really know what she was doing. So, at this point, her advice is to take what he's earned, he's done well, and to go home. She's thinking, sleep off some of the alcohol, but she doesn't say it at the time.

What she's failed to grasp is the translation from woman-speak into guy-hearing. Because, when woman says, "You should stop while you're ahead," the guy hears, "You are about to fail. You can't succeed. You are not man enough to pull this off." Woman thinks she's being helpful and offering sage advice to someone who's in the middle of a good thing and has a way to keep a good thing.

Man has to prove that he's going to succeed beyond anything she's ever imagined, and have her be so impressed with him that all other men are forgotten. To clarify a bit here, the businessman in question is older than our father. While Elizabeth does indeed appear sophisticated and older than she actually is, she's not THAT much older. Winning the favor of a twenty-something when you're fifty-something is quite the ego-booster, evidently.

Man proceeds to ignore Lady Luck's advice. Takes a small loss. She holds to her position - take what you've got, and go. No, no, it'll pull up, we'll come out of this, he says. Friends are attracted to the table.

Man proceeds to lose $2800, just a straight line of losses, to friends' flabbergastment. Lady Luck wouldn't dream of saying I told you so. Man tries to convince her to come up to his room, he'll make breakfast for her in the morning. Lady Luck, while sympathetic to his losses, decides that this is the time to excuse herself with said friends.

No word on whether losses continued.

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