A great Opening

I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people; Those who eat roadkill opossum and Those who don’t. Now, isn’t that a great opening line? Old Charlie Dickens never thought of that one. Did he? Of course, he never wrote in the caliber of Mr. Ohh! either. That and cars didn’t exist, so no opossums got run over back then. Or did they? I mean, the horses could have run them over, or the little guys might have gotten under the wooden wheels of the carriages. Then again, those vehicles were slower than today’s cars, and the rodents could have gotten out of the way. That’s another thing, opossums aren’t rodents they’re marsupials. So, I’m not sure why I mentioned it.

Charlie and Eddy

In fact, Charlie D. is guaranteed to never have an opening paragraph like that. Now before you fans get in a tizzy, I don’t mean to insult him as a writer, I’m simply noting the fact that he died in 1870. Since then, his output has really dropped off. Eddy Poe was the same way. He wrote a lot about death. Then he died. You’d think after that he’d have a lot of new insights, but no. He stopped writing all together. I guess after dying he found he didn’t much like death at all and retired to Florida and drink margaritas. 

How to eat Roadkill

As for the opossum thing, all I wanted was a great first sentence: I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people, really starts things off with a bang. Opossums came up because it’s the only thing I could easily divide in half. Everything else is into many stages and If’s and but’s. Also, I picked roadkill randomly. I’ve honestly never had the chance to try it. Maybe, pan seared in extra-virgin olive oil with a light garlic and lemon glaze, you could get rid of the rubber tire flavor and be left with the essence of good old, spoiled opossum, and that might be very tasty.

Getting to the point

What I was going to say was; There are people who play games and those who don’t, but that’s just a lie. There are thousand kinds of people who play games. There are devout players, casual players, occasional players, non-players, and players like my cousin, who haven’t showered in two years, because some idiot told them there was a hidden level on planet Gloob and they’re determined to find it. Okay, I shouldn’t have done that. It was mean, but his wife already hates me and he was asking for it.

The thing is I normally don’t play games. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m not very good at them, or if I have other things to do with my time, or maybe I’m afraid my children will learn I’m not perfect in every way, stage a coup, take over the house, lock me in a basement dungeon, then sell me to a breeding farm to create even more superior human beings, like myself. Hey, you have your irrational fears and I have mine.

At the point

Either way last month, my son and his high-school choir went to a singing competition. He had to be there from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon. That’s seven hours I had to sit around and do nothing. I wasn’t allowed to see the competitors because of covid, and I forgot to bring a book. So, I sat, and sat, and sat, and sat, and that was just the first ten minutes. I was ready to go flipping nuts when some one suggested I download a game on my phone. Boy did I get an education.

First, I had no idea what game to get. I looked at a couple, but they looked very strange. Kind of like a cross between Tic-Tac-Toe and a bank robbery. The lady next to me told me that was a jewel match game, and it was addictive. I thought that would pass the time, so I downloaded it. The point of the game was to find similar jewels and link them together. They disappeared, you got points, and more jewels fell in their place. I played for a few minutes and found it simple and kinda fun. Then the ads started showing up.

After that I was afraid to try anything, I didn’t understand. I downloaded a slot machine. I saw there were in-game purchases but I thought the game would give me a few tokens. Nope! I had to buy a hundred bucks worth of tokens for a real dollar. Well, I wanted to play so I did. It was fun but it took about twenty minutes to go through those tokens. Then I noticed I could get five-thousand tokens for twenty dollars. That was a deal. I paid it and played on. This time I did much better. I was up to a hundred thousand at one point. I started looking for the cash-out icon. I figured if I paid money in, I should be able to get it out. Right? Nope again! The house always wins. Even if it’s inside my phone. I deleted that app so fast…

Next, I thought I’d go with something safe like solitaire. I couldn’t find a regular one which was free. I did find one with a hostess. Her name was Daisey. When I started playing Daisey was in a coat and hat and we were in the snowy north mountains. As I progressed, she brought us inside and the more games I played she lost her coat and put on an apron and eventually my solitaire enabled her to clean her house. This tore me up in a whole different way. I felt like I was in the 1940’s. The man is sitting playing cards while the cute little house-wife cleans around him. I stopped playing that game before some feminist walked in, took that broom away from her, and served me with divorce papers.

The Point of no return

Try explaining that to Mrs. Ohh! “Honey, from now on the courts have ordered me to pay alimony to a fictional character in a computer game. Apparently, I abused our relationship by playing solitaire while she cleaned, never gave her any of the jewels I matched, lost too much in the slots, and was caught playing Strip Rock-Paper-Scissors, but I swear I never did that, I only watched the ads” She’ll never believe me.

Then again, she might, I’ve done some pretty stupid things.