“Share and share alike,” was what I said to my friend.  We had stopped in a casino because the airline had, not surprisingly, and not for the first time that vacation, delayed my flight.

So, from the $200.00 I had in my hand I gave him $100.00 … we only see each other once a year, and he had, as usual, hosted me … so giving him $100.00 was no burden.  Now, I had put $100.00 in the penny slot machine, and after a series of losses and gains, all very exciting, managed to pull out $200.00.  So, in my friend’s mind, because I had won $100.00, if we were to share and share alike, which he didn’t mind doing, we should each receive $50.00.

Ah-HA!  Not, so Gridley! In my own private algebra that first $100.00 is lost, gone, no more, thrown away!  Ergo, so then, and how d’ye do … I won $200.00, of which I gave him half.  I explained this to my friend.  He described my thought process with an ugly word and said, “Whatever algebra works for you,”  and took the hundred.

Open parenthesis … in the business end of the gambling world they think the same way as I do; I won a jackpot once and the machine spit out the jackpot ticket but kept the original bet just in case I wanted to keep playing — I didn’t … Close parenthesis.

Now of course this particular algebra breaks down when one ruminates on the fact that sometimes one spends $500.00 to “win” $300.00.  But ugly facts are too often obvious, mundane, depressing — so “Faugh,”I say to ugly, mundane, depressing facts!

Luckily, I make enough money to throw away $100.00 … or more … at a shot.  Not everybody does.  I’m one of Adam Smith’s lucky ones.  Putting the coin of the realm into a machine in hopes that I’ll receive more in return is definitely a first world capitalist point of view.  But that point of view can be a metaphor for something else can’t it?  Don’t we all put a lot into life hoping we get even just a little back?  Isn’t our judgment of what we get back from life dependent upon the perceived horizon against which we live our lives?

Oh hell, I don’t know.  I had a hernia operation this summer, I just had a tooth extracted in preparation of receiving a partial denture, all that is either the first chill wind of inevitable decay or … or … well … something better than that.  It all depends on how I add things up.