So, I checked up on an old friend Tuesday night. This friend happens to run the floor for one of Iowa's riverboat casinos. I was in town for a meeting, so I stopped by to drop my customary $10.00 in the quarter slots and catch up on things with him.

The conversation went like most that I get into these days, centering on the cancer treatment of my two-year-old son, Carter. And even though I have all the relevant medical information memorized, and even though we're halfway through the treatment without serious side effects or any organ damage, etc., and even though the prognosis is for a full recovery, I resented spending so much of the conversation spitting out details of a really rough patch in my life -- this is because his seemed so much more interesting. So much more colorful and full, somehow. And because I had just come from a meeting of families of children with cancer. I felt like whatever I had to say would just be depressing. I would rather have focused on him.

As I asked questions about my friend's latest exploits, I found his eyes darting about, monitoring this staff member, eyeing the next move of that dealer; a hand would pat him in greeting as someone who didn't want to interrupt, walked by. I noticed my concentration fading, too, fractured by the chrome and the glaring lights and the strobes and the Springer on television and the clank of metal as the slots poured forth in the distance. I became really frustrated, just for an instant. Forget that my friend was trying to work, and I had barged in on him. I felt like I was having a difficult time making a connection, getting through in all the bustle of the game room.

And then it occurred to me that sometimes there are messages for each of us in the happenstance of our everyday lives, and that maybe a small one had been sent to me. Every night my friend stands there, in the center of a thousand games of chance, each one set to play out a little different - the thrill of unexpected, immediate wealth for some and the dull remorse of another lost dollar for most. He's adjusted to it. He accepts it.

I decided to fight on with the conversation, learning and sharing with my friend openly, because at that moment I was vividly reminded that struggling to keep together the fiber of shared human experience, friendship, is a critically important thing, because we all find ourselves surrounded by the cacophony of so much winning and losing.

John Hedgecoth isn't immune to the lotto "stupid tax", either.