The Worst Day of My Life

I didn’t want to go anywhere that day. But I had given in to my friend Betty’s bullying insistence and had promised to join her Armenian group on their trip to Atlantic City. They needed one more person to get a special deal from one of the casinos. According to Betty, if I didn’t go with them, I might spoil their whole lives because, who knew, one of them might win big, and it would be my fault if they missed the chance for unearned riches. I didn’t know anyone in that group other than Betty, but I was stuck traveling on the bus with them. I had tried to get out of it at the last minute, but Betty had responded with righteous anger of Biblical proportions.

“You can’t do this to me!” she shouted. “I have to give the casino an exact number of people coming on this trip! If you back out now, you’ll mess it up for all of us! You be on that bus, or I will never speak to you again!”

That was a tempting offer, but I wasn’t going to say that to Betty and risk a further diatribe. So I got myself out and onto the bus headed to Atlantic City. A whole bunch of Armenians depended on me, and I felt that Armenia itself would fall to some enemy if I didn’t show up on that bus.

When I got on the bus, everyone was eagerly gabbing with each other in Armenian, and they didn’t even look at me. I sat alone and in silence for the entire two hours and fifteen minutes it took the bus to travel from New York to Atlantic City.

Betty didn’t help at all. She was busy talking to her Aunt Nare. Aunt Nare was big and muscular, had a woman mustache, and could swing an axe like a man. Aunt Nare’s husband Tigran had been an accountant in Armenia. When they came to the United States, he couldn’t find work in the accounting profession, but he got a job as a garbage collector with the New York City Department of Sanitation. It was a dirty job, but with the money he earned working overtime, he could retire early with a pension that kept Aunt Nare living in the style to which she had become accustomed. Aunt Nare and Uncle Tigran were Betty’s most affluent relatives, and Betty kept them well in sight.

At one point during the trip, Uncle Tigran went up to the front of the bus and started to speak in a voice that could be heard in California. Everyone on the bus except me screamed with laughter. Another man got up and made everyone laugh again. Then it was another man’s turn. I, of course, couldn’t understand a word. I thought of getting up and doing a makeshift stand-up act in English, but I wasn’t dumb enough to try that.

I spent my time looking out the window at the passing scenery and cursing Betty for guilting me into coming on this stupid trip.

The bus finally arrived at the casino, and we all filed out of it and headed into the neon-lit building. Most of our crowd headed to the slot machines and a few to various tables. I stood for a few minutes, my senses suddenly overwhelmed by the noise, masses of people, and strange machinery. Betty saw me, came over, and led me to an available slot machine.

“Here,” she said. “Try this one.”

“I won’t lose a lot of money, will I?” I asked.

“Set yourself a limit,” she answered. “That’s what everyone does.” She showed me how to put coins into the machine and pull the lever, then left me alone with the gadget and went to one of the tables where a guy in a red uniform was spinning a wheel.

I started slowly and timidly as the machine ate my money, almost hypnotized by the rapidly moving images on the device. I was shocked back to attention when the machine spat out a handful of quarters. I had won something! Hot damn! If I won once, I could win again! Feeling grateful, I took the quarters and put them back into the slot.

This continued for some time. I won small amounts, which I promptly re-deposited into the machine, hoping for a more significant win. I stopped only to change some bills into quarters to play some more.

I had heard about how people became addicted to gambling, but I never thought it could happen to me. There I was, though, putting one coin after another into a piece of metal, hoping to get rich. Forget about setting a limit. I would keep going if it took all my money in my purse. That elusive jackpot was there. I just had to make that piece of metal give me the right combination of images. That was all. It was so simple; it was inevitable. So why wasn’t it happening?

Betty came over to see what was up in the middle of all this.

“How are you doing?”

“Lousy,” I answered. “I keep winning small amounts, but then I keep losing.”

“You have to change machines,” she said. “You can’t stay at the same machine, especially if you’re losing. Try another one.” She pulled me to another slot machine far away from the first one, and I continued putting every coin I had into the new device with the same results.

I had to stop when I ran out of money. I couldn’t see Betty anywhere, and I didn’t know anyone else in our group well enough to borrow money, so my only recourse was to try to get money from one of my credit cards. I was heading over to do this when I passed the slot machine I had originally deposited my hard-earned coins into.

The machine had been taken out of play. I stopped a passing employee and asked him why the device was no longer active.

“Someone hit the jackpot,” he said. “Some guy with a funny name, like Tegron or Tiger. He hit it on his first try. It was amazing.”

I was too stunned to react to this news. When I came to my senses, my only thought was to find Betty and beat her up. When I finally found her, I tackled her like a football player and knocked her to the floor.

“You bitch!” I said. “You made me move; then the machine hit the jackpot! And your uncle is the winner! You did that on purpose!”

“I didn’t know it was going to do that! I swear!”  She was crying.

“You’re lying!”

“If I knew it was going to hit the jackpot, I would have played the machine myself,” she sobbed. “I’m as much a victim as you are!”

Even in my state, I had to admit she made sense. I got up and helped her to her feet.

Then we both burst out bawling and embraced.

“I need a drink,” I said. “Let’s go to the bar. Your treat. I don’t have any money left.”

“All right. Thanks.”

We ended the day in a cloud of alcohol.