The Pool Dolphin

I recently played pool in a “friendly tournament” with a group of twenty-somethings. It was the second time in as many weeks that I played with this group and probably only the fourth time I've played pool in the last year.

I'm not really that good at pool, but I can play and I can sink balls, other than the cue ball, from time to time.

This is a really great bunch of guys. The majority of them are war veterans with fascinating stories to tell; mostly about women they really enjoyed meeting in Thailand and places like that.

They call me “kid” because I'm so much younger than them. I call them “twenty-somethings” because they are all at least twenty-something years older than me. They DO NOT know I call them twenty-somethings.

The first time I played these guys I actually won the tournament, but that was more of my partners fault than mine. However, the last time I lost in the semi-final. We played three games and my partner scratched on the eight ball twice. Once in the third round because he “meant to do that” and wanted to blow everyone away in later rounds and finally in the third round because “there's something wrong with this damned table.”

All of these guys are seasoned pool players and when they make a mistake, they often do it intentionally. They either miss on purpose so that the other team has a bad shot, or they miss or even scratch so they can hustle the other players later. What I find hilarious about this is that when I make a mistake, which is quite par for the course with me, they think I am a pool shark trying to mislead them. They cannot believe that someone who sank a ball on one shot can suck that badly on the next. Well, I can.

I am here to tell you now, I am no pool shark. I am more of a pool dolphin; I can do some tricks, but mostly I'm in it for the fish.... That's not really where I meant to go with that but, I saw an out and I took it.