The Luck of the Draw

If you are lucky (or unlucky) enough to have cable TV, it would be hard not to notice the sudden explosion of televised poker games on the higher channels – celebrity poker, tournament level poker, who the hell knows what else showing people with chips and cards and, apparently, too much time on their hands. Poker to me used to be what Oscar and Felix played in their smoke-filled apartment, it’s what my grandfather played with his cronies (when they were bored with pinochle). It existed only in movies, cigars hanging out of the guys’ mouths, or at drunken parties, when the inevitable strip poker came up in the conversation. Not that I’ve ever participated in things like that, never.

Frankly, I suck at poker. I never know what to hold onto, what to throw back, how to look like I’m holding a pair of threes when I really have straight flush, ten high.

But I’ve been thinking about the game lately. Because more and more, when I have lousy days, or read some self-help book written by a person who has never really been in my situation (or has but never conquered it), the phrase, “you’ve got to play the hand you’ve been dealt” pops up.

Depending on the day, my hand seems to range from that pair of threes to a full house. But I suppose I should consider myself lucky. My life now would have been a royal flush if I lived in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where a woman could get her hands cut off for reading, if not worse. Or rural Africa, where ritual female circumcision still exists as part of their cultural norm. Or Nazi Germany.

I should count my blessings. I have a house that nobody is trying (actively) to bomb out of existence, enough to eat, a family that loves me, a wonderful husband. I’m not running from Nazis or begging in the streets or picking the detritus of my life out of a pile of rubble in Tennessee or New Orleans.

Hell. I could compare myself to any disaster anywhere. But this is still my hand. My disaster. And people keep trying to tell me that God (or whatever reasonable facsimile of a dealer is up there) won’t take my cards back.

In the bigger picture, what does this say about us as a culture that we find watching other people play poker entertaining? That “Deal or No Deal”, the game show hosted embarrassingly by Howie Mandel (Oh, Howie, how could it have come to this? Did you learn nothing from Louie Anderson?) that hinges entirely on luck is suddenly such a big hit?

Maybe we want to sit back with our pair of threes or straight flush and see if someone else can do better? Or secretly do we want to watch someone else crap out so we feel better about our own fate?

Maybe.

But I’m throwing this analogy back into the pot. Oh, Heavenly Dealer, take back your stinkin’ cards. I’d rather play chess. I’m better at it, and even though in the cosmic picture I know I’d be up against Garry Kasparov or that giant computer, but at least I’d have the illusion that I have some kind of control.