Feb. 16 - Frisson in Posso's Prompts

Frisson (n:) a sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear; a thrill.

I have an affliction for gambling. Those that know me know my savant like rattling of odds and ratios when it comes to things like craps, blackjack, poker etc but I really do enjoy one thing that takes little math at all - the slot machine.
This story is about a time where me and my friend, Hanson, decided to venture to our local bingo slot hall drunkenly at bar time one night some years ago. We had this fascination with being the biggest idiots with petty cash. Some buy shoes, fun things, or groceries; we’d stick a hundred bucks in a slot machine and be broke in 45 seconds betting the maximum you could (on these slot machines it’s commonly $5 to $10 a spin to do that.) Well, it was common for the both of us to be drunk and take our tip money from shifts we worked at different bars or even different poker games we had been at earlier and won money in, and head to the slots and try to turn it into jackpots or go home grumbling about how entertainingly stupid we were. This particular night I remember wandering aimlessly up and down the aisles and sticking in a hundred here and there and not winning anything. Usually by about the fifth hundred without winning, the lights and sounds of the casino would sober me up enough to want to leave and I was there, so I searched out my ride, Hanson, to see if we were ready to go. I find him in the back, falling asleep with a cup of soda in one hand and his other hand unconsciously pushing the button over and over again. I remember laughing about this while trying to sneakily snatch a picture of this train wreck (videos/photos are frowned upon in casinos for fear you’re trying to record things to figure out ways to cheat and so on) until he had zero in front of him. I nudged him awake and complained that I was broke and wanted to pass out. On our walk towards the door, there stood this slot called “Big Green Machine.” It was a novelty machine, loud and large and out at the front of the casino to catch the eyes of all patrons that entered. Now Hanson and I were known to stick stupid amounts in this machine just to sit on the movie theater like double seat and giggle like kids. He fumbled around in his pocket and said, “no, we can’t go until we play this one.” So, we both sat down, and he started to press buttons, I was tired and I started to pass out/nod off and don’t remember much until I was stirred by the amount of obnoxious noise coming from the machine in front of me. Hanson started to mumble things and I opened one eye and it took me a few seconds to read the screen correctly:

Please call attendant: $10,000.

Hanson, you just won ten grand.

We jumped up and started giggling and dancing. To this day we laugh about how dumb we’ve been about money and how neither of us have been that blessed with that kind of monetary dumb luck since.