Thursday Night Pool Recap

Okay, here's how it went. As clouded as my mental process may have been at the time, I feel as though I have a super-keen memory of it now.

Here's how the action played out:

The old dude with the baseball cap rings us up and goes, "Twenty-One even." Dan, irrepressible imp that he is, couldn't resist slapping his hand on the counter and yelling, "BLACKJACK!" This caused all present to collapse in gales of laughter.

So I turned to Dan and said, "That's 13 for each of us." Figuring, a $26 total gives a $5 tip. We always tip pretty well. They treat us alright. Half the time they don't seem to charge us for half of the time. So I slap down my 13, and Dan puts a 20 down, of which the guy takes 21 out leaving an assortment of bills on the counter, of which Dan leaves 3 ones for the tip which is cool, which is fine.

Then outside, Dan reminds me that Nick also played that evening. Which indeed he had, and Dan also reminded me that Nick had given me $12 - which, Jerome-like, I had forgotten all about; and which $12 was indeed discovered in my front left pants pocket. This simplified matters. I gave six of those dollars to Dan. Easy.

The upshot of all that is that is that I was the undisputed singles champ. But Dan cleaned my clock in the two-man cutthroat variant, so I'm not sure where that leaves us overall.

After thinking a bit more about it this morning, though, I had to admit to myself that if Nick paid 12...and Dan and I got 6 each from Nick's twelve...that means that Nick paid twice what Dan and I got. Which seems a bit unfair. According to the inflexible laws of math, technically, Dan and I should each give Nick 3 dollars. But I'm willing to forgive Dan his half of that debt, because he wasn't the one who made the mistake. Fair is fair.

Nick, I'll get you your $3 directly.