Snippets of Conversation on and off the Poker Table part five

So, he was good for the game in a few good ways, and I decided I could tolerate listening to the greatness of Duke, one of the perils when you don't play online poker is listening to your table-mates.

Southpaw Rounder was also at my table and delivered a line I didn’t immediately get and went right over the dudes head as well. “So you played Lacrosse at Duke.” I got it a few seconds later. It kind of went over the other dude's head. He was too busy trying to prove he qualifyied for a scholarship to bwin poker school to notice.

I guess I am a bit of an ahole because I don’t mind messing with somebody when they don’t know they are being messed with. I don’t even need an audience to do it for. Sometimes I can just humor myself by doing it. It’s like a private game.

I also like saying non-sequitor in somewhat awkward social situations. There’s usually too much a veneer of politeness for people to ever really question what you mean, which means that random thought is just fermenting in their mind. Even if they try to let it go, it’s got to creep up in to their consciousness and they got to be like what the hell did he mean by that hours after the fact. As they struggle to sleep at night, suddenly they’ll be struck with that moment of randomness and agonizing over its meaning.

For example,my wife and I were at kind of a girlie store picking out a gift for a female relative and this store lady was following us around blinking in effusive-I’m-not-going-to-leave-you-alone- politeness which only showed the virtual tattoos on her eyelids that screamed out “I work on commission.” Even as we tried to steer away this rabid retailer with “Just looking” “Just browsing” she was on us like a hunting dog on a scent. I give people a lot of leeway before messing with them and am usually polite to the point of almost looking like a doormat, but once they cross that line, it’s on. Somebody has clearly digested a lot of sales training books.

The moment that the tenor changed was when I sealed her from my personal space by turning my body completely around and talking over my shoulder, yet still she followed like a Persian doggedly hocking perfume in the mall. When she stays on our heels after two aisle turns, it’s decided… “Okay… you qualify for the head-game I am going to play with you.”

By the way, my wife hates this game. It basically involves me sounding like an idiot and watching the reaction of the person helping. Since they are trying to sell me something it means they are more willing to gloss over what I say, but I know when they get home after work the remarks are going to bounce around their skull in weird manifestations. What did he mean… fish… and… basketball?

Generally, as a species we seek to find patterns from chaos. That's the basis of many optical illusions. Same is true with nonsnese conversations. Ever run into a crazy person? This is a true story, once a guy escaped from an insane asylum when I was a kid living in a nearby small town in North Carolina.

He walked into our house through the unlocked front door (small town) and proceeded to put on my grandfather’s hat and eat our goldfish. We caught him with his hand literally in the gold fish tank. I remember a couple of things from that, one how completely at ease this crazy guy was in this decidedly un-normal situation including the string of nonsensical, but almost sensical, replies he had as he was chased out of the house, and two, that my grandfather was more upset about this guy wearing his hat, than him swallowing whole our goldfish.

For years, I tried to rationalize why he was eating gold-fish and walking into our house but there was no rhyme or reason for it.