“Yo, bro, you gotta go see the monster truck jam!” 

  The insistent young man next to me had been drinking, as had his two equally profane flush-faced friends. 

  I chuckled. “Ya, that’s not going to happen.”

  “Oh come on!” he exclaimed, “man up and get down there!”

  We were sitting at a low limit Hold’em poker table in the oil rich bonanza province of Alberta. I had flown out to Calgary a couple days before to visit my son and having done so I found myself with an afternoon to spare before flying home. Strolling 17th Avenue as I had so many times in the past I had ended up at the Elbow River Casino where I sat down for a few hours of cards for old time’s sake you might say. 

  Now low limit Hold’em is a plodding game that doesn’t pay getting fancy. It’s best to understand that everyone else at the table, regardless of how old or infirm they might seem, play the game on a more than regular basis and are as solid as they come. I had been keeping this in mind and was having a bit of success when the boys sat noisily down. 

  They razzed one another and spilled their chips and immediately called the waitress over for another round of beer. In their mid-twenties all three were newly minted paramedics from small towns hours outside of the city and were on something of a monster truck jam weekend lark. Their loud boisterous conversation revolved around big trucks, bars, drinking, exotically named shots and girls. 

  But it quickly became evident they didn’t have a clue what they were doing at a poker table. There’s an old poker saying: ‘if you sit down and cannot recognize the worst player at the table—in other words the ‘fish’—that’s because YOU are the fish!” Well these three were the fish. 

  However, fish don’t always lose. Their reckless unaccountable behaviour can sometimes be rewarded by the fickle gods of chance, which ironically benefits them all the more as no one at the table gives them an ounce of respect and persist in betting madly into an incredible run of lucky cards on the part of said fishes. 

  That’s all to say the young buck on my left was falling behind stacking all the chips the dealer kept shoving in his winning direction while the two on my right made multiple trips to the private ATM charging exorbitant fees in the corner of the room.

  The rest of us at the table either groaned, cursed, or simply chuckled at their youthful foolish exuberance. The friendly chip stacking fella on my left was asking advise of me I was happy to provide, not on play mind you but more on matters of table etiquette. 

  Meanwhile the youngster on my right, even more lit up now, had his phone out showing me video he had taken earlier of colorful ad-splattered pickup trucks on outrageously outsized tires careening around a dirt track. 

  “I’m telling you, bro,” he slurred, “you CAN’T miss the monster truck jam!”

  “Listen,” I told him, smiling, “I drive a minivan. If I bought tickets and they found that out as I tried to enter the grounds they wouldn’t even let me in!”

  “Yo, bro,” he lamented, “NOT a minivan!”

  Ahhh, to be young again!….