Trip Report - part 1 - Valets and Bankrolls

By the time SuperGirl and I extract ourselves from Friday afternoon rush hour, and into Casino Arizona's valet parking, we're barely recuperating from post-roadrage disorder, and feel about as piqued to gamble as Senator John Kyle is to post a big blind.

SuperGirl gets out of the driver's seat and desperately looks to grab our claim ticket so she can quickly get to a bar and convalesce appropriately. The Latin looking valet guy seems to be writing feverishly, perhaps translating Chaucer's Knight Tale from middle English into Spanish.

Fortunately, SuperGirl has seen this tactic before and wishing to avoid the valet giving her his zodiac sign, preemtively says something to him in her mile-a-minute dialect. Then as she turns her back to him, she tells him to give me the ticket.

Unsurprisingly, he goes into his very poor David Copperfield routine and quickly hands me a pre-stamped ticket from a different stack. Since I'm about ready to collapse from SuperGirl's not-yet-mastered nuances of her own car's manual transmission, I refrain from a confrontation and hurry to catch-up with "mi esposa".

At the bar, we unwind with a #6 (no msg), a shot of tequila, and ready to part company, promising, as we always do in similar circumstances, that whoever is up or down $300 first, seek out the other immediately.

There is the small matter of bankroll division, so assuming she is going to hit the $10 minimum tables, I count-out a very respectable $400 for SuperGirl to mete out her own sense of justice, while taking $600 for my 10/20 HE efforts.

Instead of this seemingly trivial operation going smoothly, she tries to use some weak-ass Jedi mind trick to compel me to give her more money!

I question her demand and she replies with, "I'm playing $25 minimum baby -- need money to make money and you know how important a bankroll is, don't you?"

How the hell am I supposed to argue with that? Who knew she actually paid attention to my bankroll lectures to friends, colleagues, neighbors and anyone else who'd listen? To deny her additional funds at this stage would be hypocritical and would likely relegate my ass to couch-duty once back at home.

You might be asking yourself, what with the compensation that must go along with SuperGirl solving so many of the world's problems, promoting healthy skin & tight fitting jeans, and stopping bad guys dead in their tracks, why she'd simply not make use of her own SuperMoney or her own SuperATM card?

Good question. Great question. I've never asked it real-time for reasons not unlike those which might land me in Chateau Bow-Wow; but more so, because whenever we go to a casino, she brings only her driver's license (which I'm forced to safe-keep) so to underscore the point that if money will be needed, it won't be coming from her. This appears to be the price I pay for having this little hobby of mine.

I give her $600, same as my bankroll(!), and beg her to please pay close attention to her money management, her cheat-card telling her when to hit/stick/double/split, and for god's sake, the dealers.

She kisses me on the cheek, certain to have ignored my heed, and in what I'd normally find very adorable, tells me to do likewise!!