Dying on the Floor of Penny Heaven

Each summer, my wife and I take a one-week trip to a popular travel destination. During our trips, we sometimes visit local casinos for some low-stakes gambling. 

When we do, we visit the low-roller casinos, and within those, we gravitate to the lower-roller sections–the sections of the casino floors reserved for the ultra low-rollers, ingloriously tucked away, to hide the shame of the casinos and the shame of the gamblers found therein. They feature $1 tables and 1¢ and 5¢ slot machines.

During one evening visit, my wife and I exchanged funds for a plastic bucket of nickels and headed over to the slot machines in the section appropriate for us. I believe it was called Penny Heaven. But looking around, it was not exactly the picture of heaven that one most likely has in mind.

Rather than play simultaneously at two adjacent machines, we picked one machine, and took turns playing. Since we shared the same machine, we also shared the same stool. One of us would sit on the stool, play a few rounds, and then would we switch.

Our stool for this evening was a bar stool with four tall legs, a high seat (about 3 feet high), and a small backrest, which my wife draped her purse strap over. 

During one particular seating switch, my wife jumped off the stool and I, not looking back, started to climb onto it. I lifted up one knee, got my butt horizontal with the seat, and started leaning my upper body backwards. 

At precisely the same moment, my wife pulled at her purse strap, which you may recall, is hooked on the backrest of the stool. This pulling action caused the stool to fall over.

Of course, I didn’t see any of this. (If I did, I wouldn’t have a fun story to share.) I kept leaning back…and leaning back…unexpectedly falling through space and time, until…THUD!!! I landed on the most undignified section of the casino floor, back-first, like an overturned turtle. 

As my body made impact, so did the bucket of nickels in my possession. Those went flying everywhere, making a tremendous clinking sound. That only brought more attention to my body on the floor, and the fact that I am outdated and cheap, still playing with actual nickels. 

It also created the appearance that I fell off the stool because I’m sloppy drunk.

My wife apologized to me repeatedly, and a few very nice, considerate low-rollers came over and helped me gather my collection of nickels spread out over the floor. They also asked me if I was OK. I had the wind knocked out of me, so I couldn’t verbally reply at the moment, but I appreciated their concern. And thankfully, with such miserable low stakes, no one bothered to pocket any of my errant nickels.

There was no way to gracefully play off my fall, so I didn’t even try. I just stood back up and watched my wife play, looking like the clumsy loser idiot that I am. Not concerned about any side glances or murmuring that may have been occurring. “I hope drunk guy is OK. You should have seen him fall, dude. Crashed like a ton of bricks. That guy over there. Yeah, him.”

I will say, that was much more excitement than I bargained for in Penny Heaven. Thank you for providing such an inexpensive and memorable evening. I got a lot of bang for my nickel.