The Gambling Sickness  I'm with my siblings Heather, Ramona, and Wally. We're going to a play at Ford's Theatre. We're outside. I get into my mom's Chevy Celebrity; I'm driving. The car is very clean. I go to pick them up. We're in a casino that we've stopped at. I play a few quarters in a random slot machine. I talk to someone-maybe Wally- telling him about a woman who defaulted on her loans, and then won enough at the casino to make a payment of $8,000 towards the principle of her loan. As my slot machine spins I say it would be nice to win enough to pay a chunk of loans like that. I turn and look at the slot machine. Numbers stop spinning: 2, 0, 0... As they stop one by one, I imagine the best: the jackpot, of all zeros after the two. The numbers keep flipping, and are all zeros! I have won 10,000 quarters! I start to laugh! Wally is there. Bells on the machine go off. The machine has stopped at 171,000,000 coins. Wow, I think: I've won a lot. I call the attendant over. She asks me if I want a check. I say yes. I reconsider and ask the siblings if we should gamble more instead of going to the theatre. They say yes, so I tell the woman attendant I'd like $1,000 cash and the rest in a check. She tells me she'll need my ID and a cologne sample. I say I'm not wearing any cologne. There is a hassle over my ID. They need a photograph to validate my identity. They ask for a photo of me with a moose! I tell them I don't have any such thing, but that I can get a photograph of me with my two siblings, Wally and Ramona. I stand in a circle with the attendant and a group of casino regulators as we discuss and argue over the ID issue. The regulators are against paying me without their conception of "proper" ID because they argue it will decrease their odds of winning. The attendant has the check in her hand: a stick of gum. I recognize the evil in gambling: the sickness it is, when all the regulators are there. I have gotten lucky, and should remember that I'm very susceptible to the sickness.