School Stories, Job, Poker

Two stories of note today. Story One: Since I have a lot of time to just walk around, I find things to keep me amused. Usually, I pick up a random object that I find on the carpet and play with it. Yesterday, it was a big paper clip. Today, it was a quarter. I was acting like Two Face for the short while I had the quarter, but then it was taken from me. By a Special Needs student. Here's our conversation verbatim:

Charlie: "What you got there?"
Me: "A quarter." (holds out quarter in palm for admiration)
Charlie: (takes quarter and walks off)
Me: (stands with empty palm upturned and watches Charlie walk off)

I passed him in the hall later and he thanked me for the quarter.

Story Two: I was stationed at a door to make sure kids don't sneak out during class. This is fruitless as we are only stationed at two of the ten or so doors that lead outside, but that is a different conversation. Students have a schedule on the back of their ID cards that shows when they can come and go from the building, so they are supposed to show their card to me before leaving. One student walked right past me and when I yelled for him to stop and show me his ID card he responded by screaming "Don't touch my chicken wings!" over and over and over until he was finally outside. I didn't follow. I later learned that there was a Special Needs classroom located right near the door that I was watching. Special Needs Kids: 2, Bret: 0.

As hilarious as the Bouncer position will be for the blog, I will only be doing it for another couple of weeks. I was offered a big boy job with Bank of the West today and I accepted it. Even though I'm starting as the Assistant Customer Services Manager I hope to one day achieve a high enough status to be in the banker's pen in a WaMu commercial. Or to have my official job description be Guy Who Lights Cigars With Hundo's. But that's like two or three months from now, so no point getting ahead of myself. If some of you (Katie) thought that the 25 year old hall monitor was hilarious, picture me going to work in a suit every day. Knee slapper!

I didn't play poker yesterday, but I spent a lengthy amount of time at work thinking about a poker conversation that I had online a few days ago. I was slumming it at a $.10/.25 NLHE ring game because I was bored and there were these two tools getting into it. One guy was pretty Hellmuthian (user name GJ and then a bunch of numbers I don't remember), and another guy was ragging on him pretty hard. Other guy bad beat GJ in a pot for all of GJ's money ($10), so GJ bought into the table for what was likely his entire $315 bankroll. This incited further verbal jabs, and somehow I got in the mix by saying something to the effect of "You are too worked up over $10." GJ then questioned whether I would care about a $10 loss, so I brought MY entire bankroll to the table. He shut up, but then started asking about the games I usually play, and the turned to conversations about pots won and lost. The biggest pot that I've ever won was right around $850. The biggest one I've lost was right around $1600. Most of the younger poker players that I know are the same way; their biggest win isn't even close to their biggest loss. GJ claimed to have won a pot for $1775, but to have never lost a pot larger than $250. I told him that I didn't believe that at all and asked about what size of games each pot had occurred in, but he got quiet and left shortly thereafter. My thoughts all day circled around how many people have actually won a pot bigger than their biggest loss. Obviously numerous people have had to rake in pots bigger than ones that they've shipped away, but how big is the typical discrepancy? Does it mark a turning point in your poker career when you win a pot bigger than your biggest loss? I couldn't answer any of these. Hopefully somebody will provide some insight.