Cakes and Coins

I can hit heads on a coin flip nine times out of ten. It’s kind of like how some of the best basketball players can hit a free throw at 90% accuracy.

Today, at the South Coast Coin Flippers Tourney, I can hear the soft thump of metallic coins landing on mats all around me. The bright lights of the arena shine down on all of the players, deep in concentration, sweat dripping from their brows, focused on making that next flip.

I’ve been hitting 67%. It’s god-awful and downright embarrassing as a professional coin flipper. My opponent — standing across from me with a stupid smug grin on his face — has been solid all day, a steady 82%. 

It’s been a fast decline for me from the height of my fame as an all-star coin flipper to my demise as barely trying to survive in this business.

I’ve got this one next flip, that will determine my future here. If I can hit my call — it’s always heads — I can maintain a 70% flip rate and my career is still alive. If I miss, I officially fall off the leader boards, I can’t qualify for the next tourney, and I end up back in my miserable life as a crippled loser. The worst part is, I’ll never get to fulfill the real reason I decided to go pro with coin flipping.

*

One would think that something with a 50/50 chance of winning wouldn’t be entertaining enough to publicize on television. It seems that people really have lost their marbles on what they spend their time on. I was shocked when the workout competition, The Crossfit Games, became televised. Why would anyone want to watch a bunch of people yell at each other and lift weights on TV? As if going to the gym and seeing how skinny and pathetic a sixteen-year-old kid — with a deformed left arm — was compared to the juice heads wasn’t enough of a self-esteem killer, and now I get to watch it at home too!

Apparently, coin flipping is big business, and the networks make a killing off of idiotic people sitting at home watching the damn thing. Although it’s a good thing people love it because it’s all I ever really had going in my life.

When I was two, I was left by my ‘real’ parents at an orphanage, or so I’m told. I don’t know anything about them; no photos or memories survived. The only thing I know for sure is that they didn’t give a rat’s ass enough to keep me. 

My adopted dad — with his big nose and eyebrows that could be two caterpillars — tells me that it’s probably better that they ditched me if they weren’t able to look after me, that I was lucky to have people like him in my life. What I think is that they saw my left arm looking like a rotting twisted tree stump, and decided they wanted none of it. 

Often, I lay awake at night thinking about my birth parents. What were they like? Did they really leave me because I was so repulsive? Would they be proud of me now?

I never really had any friends. Well, I had one friend, once. His name was Ben. We would spend time after school at my house together building Lego sets. Ben was impressed that I could do what I did with only one hand. He said I was special. 

When we got to high school, Ben seemed to want to spend less time with me and more time with the popular kids. Lego became ‘uncool.’ He ended up going to all the parties and became friends with the kids who would stuff me in garbage cans and hit me with a giant canoe paddle in the stairwell. I really don’t blame them; if I saw someone who looked as putrid as I did, I would probably want to do the same thing. 

My adopted dad was just as much of a jerk to me as the rest of them. Pa wouldn’t leave me alone when I came home in tears those days. He kept asking me if everything was OK at school and trying to ‘help’ me. Didn’t he understand how embarrassed I was? 

I don’t think he could help anyone after Ma left him. I never met her, but he keeps a picture of her by his bedside. I think he hopes one day she might come back.

My Pa says I’m obsessive and I might have some sort of mental health thing. He’s probably right. I remember studying technical manuals on engines and all sorts of machinery when I was eight. My school evenings and summer vacations were spent tinkering with my Pa’s Ford F150 engine. He says he was fascinated that I could do it one-handed and that I was unique.

When I was ten, I would sneak into the old air park by my home and fiddle with the plane engines. After the staff at the park realized that all of the planes were suddenly sputtering out before take-off, they figured out what was happening and I was banned from the air park. My Pa let me work on his truck again after that, even though he couldn’t get to work a few times after I busted it up. I remember hiding from him and lying that I didn’t touch his car that day. I still don’t know if he knew I was lying or not.

My Pa tells me that I am some sort of ‘whiz kid’ and that I’m lucky to be so good at these things. I don’t feel lucky. All of my life I have been unlucky. I just like figuring out how things work. I wish I could have figured out who my real parents were, where they lived, if they ever would come to look for me.

Coin flipping for me started as a problem to solve. At first, I just found it interesting. I saw some videos on YouTube of some people being able to hit six coin flips in a row. It was pretty fascinating; something that you thought was a 50/50 chance could actually be learned so you could hit your call better than average, without regressing to the mean. I thought, heck, if I could learn that, I could make a killing!

So I started reading. I picked up every book I could find: Physics, Metals and Alloys, Surfaces, Kinetics, The History of Coin. I started by practicing in my room; I would flip a coin and try to land heads. Quickly, I realized that different surfaces gave you different results: the carpet, versus wood, versus pavement, versus concrete. Every material had a different density and a different bounce. It was much easier to flip on surfaces that had very little bounce. I found that those rubber tiles you find on gym floors worked perfectly. There was also a technique to it. If you could position your thumb and flick it at the right angle at the right time, you could time your flip so that it always landed on the side you wanted.

My Pa noticed how much interest I had started taking in flipping coins; enough that he changed my birthday dessert. Every year, for my birthday, my Pa buys me a chocolate cake — my absolute favorite. The rich, dark icing always glistens in the lights over the kitchen table and drizzles over the side like sweet gobs of honey. Often, I find myself salivating hungrily before I take the first bite. It’s always been my favorite day of the year. When I started coin flipping, the cake came with a big chocolate quarter on the top. 

For my birthday, he also buys me a book. The year I started my new passion, he gave me a book called Outliers. After reading it, I learned that if you spend 10,000 hours doing one thing, you can become a master, so I put all of my time into flipping coins. I would wake up early before school for a couple of hours and then go straight into the evening until Pa wouldn’t let me stay up anymore. I know I’m not close to 10,000 hours yet, but if I keep going, maybe one day I can call myself a master.

I guess I am obsessive like my Pa says. It’s hard to believe that he lets me spend all of my time flipping coins. He told me that whatever I have a passion for he would support. I wondered what my real parents would do. Would they tell me that flipping coins was stupid? If I only could meet them, maybe my life would change.

The good news is, I started making money. It started with dollar bets. At school during lunch hour, with some of the other outcast kids, we would bet on a coin flip. Often, I would win seven times out of ten. After a while, they stopped playing as they had lost all their money. So I had to find another way to bet with my new-found talent.

 It’s amazing what you can find on the internet; the social networks and meet-ups that existed for coin flipping were growing rapidly. I started going to local hang-outs — some shady underground venues that always stank like urine in a car park stairwell — placing some bigger bets: five bucks a flip, then twenty, then fifty. I had quite the bankroll going. One day my Pa found all the cash stuffed in a cardboard box labeled Books under my bed. That day he talked to me about it. He said I could keep going if it was what I really wanted to do. He seemed worried about me. He was always worried.

After some of the videos on YouTube went viral, other people started picking up the craft. It became a sensation. Eventually, tournaments started appearing in the major cities, big money was on the line. Some tourneys had $1000 entry fees. They kept upping the ante, and soon I was forking up $5,000 just to get into a tourney. The payouts were huge! In one tournament that I won, I came back with $200,000 square! 

The networks started televising the events. As soon as the media caught wind of a rising talented one-armed coin flipper, they were all over me. They said I had a disadvantage, even though I flipped coins with my right hand. Heck, I wasn’t complaining, I had an ugly stump for a left arm, and I would take any positive attention.

I started to get interviews and began my first appearances on TV. People would recognize me on the street — they even wanted to take pictures with me. I felt like I was on top of the world. Maybe, if I kept going, I could be the greatest coin flipper who ever lived. The G.O.A.T. I could be a rich guy and have a Ferrari, or a mansion, or a yacht. Maybe I could have my own parties that I could invite people to. I would never have to worry about not getting invited to a party again.

I kept imagining the moment when my real parents saw me on TV, the smiles on their faces, the pride that they felt for their son. That moment was everything. It shone in the corner of my mind like a glistening chocolate cake. For the entirety of my coin flipping career, that image stayed with me.

Then things took a turn for me pretty quickly.

I lost my touch.

For some bizarre reason, I couldn’t flip. It was like my magic right hand had become a solid block of lead. On a normal day, I could hit the call nine times out of ten; I was an all-star. In one tournament, I started hitting eight out of ten. Then the next, it was seven, then six. You can’t play in tournaments hitting 60%. I couldn’t get my stride back and I couldn’t figure it out. It seemed like the more I tried to alter my technique, the worse I would get.

I remember the despair I felt on those low days after another bad tournament; the fear of decline and loss and crumbling dreams. I felt that all the time I had spent on coin flipping was a waste. I had put years of my life into this, and now it was all being washed down a dirty drain. What would I do if I couldn’t flip? What did I have if I lost this one thing that made me special?

My Pa said that no matter what happened, he would support me. That he would be with me through thick and thin. Would he keep his promise if I failed? What about my real parents? Would they ever know who I was if I wasn’t on TV to be recognized? Would they ever be honored that they had a son like me?

*

The bright lights of the arena are blinding. I can hear the delicate thump of metal coins landing on soft mats around me. Muted voices are ringing through the air; numbers and scores are being tallied.

This is it.

The moment of the biggest flip in my life.

If I can make my call, my hopes are still alive. If I can’t, the thrill of the chase, the ladder to success, that glistening chocolate cake, it’s all over, my dreams dissolved away into the rubber mat beneath my feet.

I look over at my opponent across the flip line. He looks confident, like he knows I am going to choke. I can see it on his self-righteous face. My gaze drifts into the surrounding crowd; a sea of faces shine in the brilliant lights of the arena. 

I catch a glimpse of a big nose and thick caterpillar eyebrows. My eyes meet my Pa. He’s smiling, his warm eyes sparkle in the lights.

I feel something change inside me. It’s a subtle shift, but it makes all the difference.

It’s as if I’m seeing Pa for the first time. He’s here. He was always here. And I know he is proud. 

All this time I had wanted that chocolate cake, and all I had to do, was look at things, just a little differently.

All at once, I feel like I have finally found some real luck.

I look across at my opponent, place the cool metallic coin between my forefinger and thumb, and flip.

I turn to walk. I can hear the gentle whirring of the coin as it spins through the air. 

I hear its soft thump as it lands on the mat behind me.