Blackjack thumb
Posted on | May 27, 2005 | 2 Comments
Yesterday was graduation day for our only child. Her class consisted of over 1000 students, so it took a solid two hours to march them all across the stage, with about a 3-5 second pause between names.
After weeks of dry weather, it decided to threaten rain yesterday afternoon, which could have been bad news because the graduation was held at an outdoor concert pavilion and we would have gotten soaked. Luckily the rains came early in the day at a time when it didn’t really matter. Some of the hillside seating was damp, but it proved not to be a problem.
Ceremonies ended at 10 pm, and at 10:30 the lock-in began, so we didn’t have much downtime. I dealt blackjack from 10:30 through nearly 5 am without a break of any sort. I discovered two possibly new afflictions. One is barstool butt–after sitting perched on the edge of a barstool for all that time, my ass aches. Sort of like what happens to new cyclists on racing bicycles with little, unpadded seats. The solution for that is a gel seat or seat cover, the gel being composed of the same material used in breast implants (a bit of trivia that gets tossed around a lot!) Alas, I didn’t have a gel seat cover last night.
The second affliction arose from the fact that the cards we were using were real casino decks, very stiff cards. We used two decks intermixed, so I ended up shuffling an impressively sized stack of cardboard and my right thumb is sore today from flexing the cards. I’m not sure why only one is sore, but I noticed it early this morning and it’s still a little achy. (So is my butt, thanks for asking.)
The lockin was a huge success, I’d say, extremely well attended. As I said, I didn’t stop even to go to the bathroom or eat the entire night. Time flew past, but when we were done I was exhausted. We went home (I was also hungry but too tired to think about eating) and slept until 8:30 or so, when I woke up and couldn’t figure out how to get back to sleep again, so I got up and went to work. I’m a little bit thick-headed at the moment (moreso than usual, for those about to make any witty comments) and I’ll probably crash early tonight, but at least I’ll get the day’s work in before the long weekend. I’ll be away for a few days next week, too, so staying ahead of the work game minimizes the amount that I’ll have to catch up on when I get back.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
May 27th, 2005 @ 2:20 pm
The concept of lockins freaks me out. Are you literally locked in? What if there’s an accident or a fire or something?
May 27th, 2005 @ 2:24 pm
They aren’t literally locked in, just conceptually. Kids can leave at any time–they just can’t come back if they do, which keeps them from going out to the parking lot for a drink and returning drunk. As an incentive, all the night’s prizes are given out at 5 am and you have to be present to win…and the prizes are impressive: bikes, ipods, laptops, cash…
Also, if they leave, their parents are notified. That means that parents can sleep content in the knowledge that the kids are in a controlled environment and not out running the roads, unless notified otherwise.