Skip to main content

Wanna Bet? Part 3

I was at dinner the other night, generally having a merry old time with a bunch of other people. It started out like many other meals, with people showing up on time, people showing up late (guilty as charged), and all sorts of chatter back and forth. Somewhere in the middle of all that, though, the outing took a sudden, and hilarious, turn: a bet was made.

I knew most of the people there, so it was easy to hop from conversation to conversation as the night wore on. On one of those hops, I overheard one of the people at the other end of the table comment that she wasn't going to eat much. She apparently hadn't eaten much for the rest of the day, either. To make matters worse, the first sip of her (alcoholic) drink had hit her surprisingly hard. Given all of that, the "I'm not going to eat much" plan seemed a bit dubious to me, so I suggested she eat more than a couple of bites of food.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who thought this way. Another guy farther down the table, and closer to her, also suggested the same. Hoping to impress on her how strongly he believed that she should eat, he blurted out, "look, I'll even pay for your dinner if you finish it." And, thus, a bet was born.

Now, you might think that he was just kidding or that he didn't really mean what he said. However, the fact that someone might question his sincerity clearly crossed his mind. To quickly, and decisively, put an end to any doubts, he took out a twenty dollar bill and put it on the table in front of her. Amid a few chuckles and a couple of squeals of delight, he repeated his offer. If there was any uncertainty whatsoever, it was completely gone now: game on.

Looking back, I don't know what compelled me to do what came next. Maybe I got caught up in the moment, maybe I just like a good bet, or maybe I just figured it was a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things. Either way, the next words out of my mouth were, "you know what? I'll double down on that. If you finish your meal, I'll chip in another twenty." I didn't actually pull out more money and lay it out in front of her (I thought that was a tad gauche), but I threw in my lot with the guy.

The thought of a free meal, and then some, worked like a charm. She happily dove into her dinner at that point. Actually, it might have worked a little too well. At one point, she commented that she was really full, but then she took one look down in front of her, and went back to work. That was actually counter to the original idea, so I suggested that eating to the point of pain probably wasn't a good idea, either. Still, she was on a mission. Luckily, she didn't get sick or anything.

As soon as she polished off the last bite, I let out a good laugh, pulled out my share of her winnings, and handed it to her. She'd earned it. And I'd simultaneously managed to earn myself one amusing story in the process. Not too a bad a trade, I'd say.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

From Scratch 2

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings . It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right? We found out this weekend. First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time. Still, there was a method to this ( including the trusty sanduk...
Post a Comment
Read more

Inside and Outside

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...
Post a Comment
Read more

Pink

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...
Post a Comment
Read more