Call Me E.

Call Me E.
all stories and essays by Sean Rein

My Asian Friends Like to Gamble
I work with eight Asian guys. Their names are Thach, Tam, Bunang, Wateng, Viet, Porge, Sa, and Kai. They are all great guys, and I would consider them all friends if you asked me.

Besides the fact that they all have immigrated to this country from a Southeast Asian country, they all love to gamble. All of them have retained their native language, and will converse with each other in said tongue. I have met some uneducated people of European descent who get angry when recent immigrants speak in their native language. I have only one thing to say to these hillbillies... I'd like to see your dumb white asses learn any second language! You don't even have a good grasp on English, yet alone brain cells enough to tackle a second one.

There, I got that off my chest.

My first clue to their gambling ways was a conversation I overheard Thach having on the phone. It was Friday, January 3rd at about 5:00 p.m. I understood six words of his end of the conversation and it sounded like this.

"Blah blah blah blah, Ohio State. Blab blah blah blah, minus seven. Blah blah blah blah, fifty dollars."

I didn't need to speak Vietnamese to understand what took place. If you don't know anything about betting on sports, Thach bet fifty dollars that Ohio State would beat Miami or not lose by more than seven points in the national title college football game. If you don't remember, Ohio State won in overtime and Thach won his bet. I don't know how much money he won—that all depends on what odds his bookie gave him. If you don't know what a bookie is, he or she was the person on the other end of the phone line taking Thach's illegal bet.

Did I mention that Thach drives a 1998 BMW 318. It was a spendy car brand new and Thach is only 22 years old. One night at the bar, after Thach had two margaritas in him, I asked him how much he paid for his Beemer. He said "I won it, man!" Where did you win it? "At the casino," he said in a condescending fashion. Which casino? "Mystic Lake," he scolded, as if I was the dumbest person ever to talk to him.

I don't go gambling very often anymore, but out of all of the Native American casinos here in Minnesota, I have to say Mystic Lake is my favorite. It's huge, and if you want to lose the boss (wife), there are plenty of places to get lost and lose all of your money.

The Friday before the Super Bowl, Tam and Viet were talking about who was going to win, Oakland or Tampa Bay. I chimed in and said that I thought Oakland had a good chance of winning. This wiped Viet into such an excited and aroused state that I thought he might start humping my leg.

"So, you're betting on Oakland, Sean?" he asked. I told him that I wasn't going to bet on the game for two reasons. First, I never win on sports bets. Just ask anybody who has gone to Las Vegas with me. Me betting on sports is the same as flushing money down a toilet. I'd have just as good of a chance of winning. The second reason, I told Viet, is that I don't know anyone who would take illegal sports bets here in Minnesota.

Viet shot me a look of pure confusion. He didn't understand why I would like keeping my money in my wallet.

Did I mention Power Ball? Minnesota is one of the states that is in the Power Ball pool and all eight of these guys are Power Ball nuts! Several months ago the jackpot got up into the 300 million dollar range and I thought that they all were going to lose their voices discussing it with each other for eight hours a day.

All of us on second shift tossed two bucks into a pool to buy tickets for the jackpot. Whoever bought us the 44 tickets photocopied all of them and handed us all a copy so we could check the numbers and know if we won any money.

This sparked a two-hour conversation about the "right" numbers to play. Kai didn't like our tickets. There weren't enough numbers in the twenties for his liking so he went out and bought even more tickets for himself.

I didn't want to mention that his chances were 1 in 65 million of winning.