By: Fran Crocus
I live in a nursing home and am relatively independent. I have heart problems which keep me in the nursing home, instead of living on my own. To be honest with you, I really prefer to be on my own. I understand the risks and am getting quite comfortable here. It’s great to be surrounded by a lot of people who generally care about you. I don’t have many family members, especially ones that come and visit. So living on my own was lonely at times. I am never lonely here, there is always someone to talk to or some entertaining activities to take part in. Every Tuesday afternoon we usually play Bridge or Scrabble. All of the games and activities we take part in are all organized by the home. We spend hours every Tuesday laughing and playing cards until the sun sets.
On this one particular Tuesday the activities organizer, her name is Katie wanted to teach us a new game. She said it was all the rage right now and everyone was playing it. When she told us what game it was, we all giggled out loud. It was poker! I thought it was hilarious that Katie thought we didn’t know how to play poker! Poker has been around for hundreds of years. There are only a couple of ladies who didn’t understand how to play. It was easy to teach them how to play. Poker is a quick game to learn, but can take years to master. We were all so excited to play poker, bridge was getting boring! Poker brought a whole new excitement to our Tuesday afternoons! We were even allowed to place bets with real poker chips. We were not playing for real money, but playing with the chips helped us imagine we were real winners!
Every week our card circle kept getting bigger and bigger. All any of u talked about was poker. Even when it wasn’t Tuesday, we would still play in each others rooms for entertainment. Katie finally decided to make poker nights twice a week. We even set up a tournament and the winner would have dinner catered from a fancy restaurant. Even the guys started to take over our card circle. They wanted in on all the excitement! We came up with a great idea, casino night! It took months to plan, we wanted to turn the cafeteria into a high-rollers casino. Complete with dealers and all of us dressing up in our finest.
Once the night came, it was a blast. We had poker, roulette, blackjack, slots and so much more. I had never had so much fun at the home as I did that night. It was actually quite romantic. I told my kids all about it and they were impressed. I actually think they were a little jealous. Katie told us we would be able to have a casino night once a month! Just to think, all this fun and excitement started from one little game of poker. For Christmas that year, my son and daughter bought me a cell phone. They showed me how to play poker on cell phone. Now, I practice playing poker on my phone whenever I have down time. I used to waste all my free time watching soaps and sewing, now I play poker!