A poker game is a common social activity formerly taken for granted. Not any more. Kevin Cool has this Perspective.
Nearly every month for 20 years I drove to my friend Seth’s house in San Francisco for a poker game. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. Either way, I always left feeling lucky. Because those evenings were only partly about poker and mostly about the friendships. Along with the laughter, we have seen each other through deaths and divorces, the arrival of grandkids and the onset of retirement.
Our nights together always started in the kitchen, devouring Seth’s quesadillas while we talked about sports and TV shows and random topics such as who was funnier, Richard Pryor or Robin Williams. And then we played cards and made fun of each other for three hours or so.
My poker crew is a community I treasured even in good times, and never more so since we stopped playing 14 months ago, locked down by COVID‐19.
I’ve missed those guys all the more because of the other losses I’ve experienced.