Tampon Girl (Revisted) -- Special World Cup Post

Over a year and a half ago, I explored the possibility of reprinting some of my earliest blog posts, published back before many (or any) folks were reading the blog.  I was afraid of not having time to publish new material for awhile, but it turned out I only had to repost one old post and have been able to keep new material up here on a regular basis.  

However, because there was such a short interval between my previous and current Vegas visits, I find myself a little short of written material, so I am going to repost one of my very earliest stories.  Hardly anyone has read this post.

It is especially timely now, as the story I told took place during the previous World Cup (2010, I believe), and of course, now we are right in the middle of World Cup again.  So, consider this my tribute to World Cup.  I wasn't even adding illustrations to my posts back then, but I found a few pics that seem appropriate.  Oh....and after you read the re-post below, stay tuned for a special post-post comment.

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This story dates back to when World Cup was going on most recently, whenever the heck that was.

I was at BSC, playing the usual 2/4 limit game.  Two women, late 20’s, maybe a bit older, joined the table, one at a time.  They were together.  They were both rather unattractive and both considerably overweight.  One was blonde; the other brunette.  The brunette was rather quiet, didn’t say much, except occasionally talked to her friend.  The blonde was something else, though.

She was beyond chatty.  She was a non-stop talker, making comments about anything and everything; poker, Vegas, food, current events, you name it.  For a long time she didn’t say anything that was of remotely of interest to me, so I tuned her out.  She was fairly obnoxious, to be sure.  And did I mention unattractive?

But I was paying attention when one of my favorite dealers, Brent, came to deal.  Brent deals fast, probably the second fastest dealer in the room.  The blonde girl took note of this.  After watching him deal a few hands, she said to him, "So Brent, aside from dealing poker, what else can you do with those fast hands?"

Brent laughed, hesitated for a few seconds and finally said, "I wish my girlfriend appreciated fast."

Blonde girl replied, "No, I was just interested in the fast hands and what you can do with them.....I'm not interested in a jackrabbit."

Brent wisely decided to not pursue the conversation any further and thus keep his job.

Not long after that, I pulled a pill case out of my pocket to get some aspirin.  I can’t say the blonde girl was the cause of my headache, but she probably didn’t help.  She hadn’t said anything specific to me up until that point, her wonderful chatter was for everybody to “enjoy”, but she was suddenly interested in my medications.  “Say, what’s that in your pill case over there?”  I told her it was aspirin.  She replied, “Aspirin?  Really?  You sure it’s not Viagra?”

I didn’t miss a beat.  I said what any man would say in that situation.  “No, it’s aspirin.  I don’t need Viagra, thank you.”  Of course, I had to bite my tongue, because I so wanted to add, “Unless I had to schtup you, that is. But in that case, I’m not sure there’s enough Viagra in the world!”  I wanted to say that, but being a gentlemen, I did not. Despite the fact that she certainly deserved it.  I just shook my head in disbelief. 

Anyway, she blathered on.  It so happens, everyone else at the table was male, and there were a bunch of World Cup fans playing.  Something controversial had happened recently in a World Cup game, and the soccer fans there ranted on and on about it.  I have no idea what they were saying—as with the blonde girl’s talk, I was tuning out, having zero interest in soccer. 

The soccer talk got so intense, the blonde girl had no choice but to shut up for awhile, she actually couldn’t get a word in edgewise.  Finally, there was a slight pause in the soccer talk.  I’m not sure if the soccer talk was over or they were thinking of more to add on the discussion, but suddenly the obnoxious blonde blurted out, quite loudly so everyone at the table could hear, “So…..what do we all think of the new tampons?”

Reaction was mixed.  Some laughs, some stunned silence, some head-shaking.  In all my years of playing poker, this was I was sure the first time I’d ever heard the word “tampon” used at poker table.  But then, I had just had my manhood questioned for the first time at a poker table too.  After the stunned silence, one of the guys at the table said meekly, “Well, I hear they’re really absorbent.”

“Tampon Girl” kept blabbing on and on until she finally ran out of chips.  Didn’t see her or her friend again the rest of my trip, which I was not at all unhappy about, even if she did give me a rather unusual tale to tell.

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Post-post comment:  This story took place long before I started the blog, but it stayed in my mind because it was one of the stories I told my friends about something odd that had happened at the poker table that nobody could believe would ever happen.  After all, who expect a discussion of a feminine hygiene product to occur at a poker table?

But as it turned out, a few years later, I met my pal Prudence, and she talked about all sorts of unusual things at the poker table. In fact, one time she pulled out a tampon of her purse and almost used it as a card protector.  You can find that story here.