Ever since I moved to Bradford, a town of 24,500 that’s thirty minutes removed from the northern tip of metropolitan Toronto, my clothing has sat in opened boxes, mired in disarray and live poker time has waned. Connection in a moment. I don’t get to play as much as I used to (we’re a one-car family for the moment and sacrifices had to be made) and sad to say, I no longer get to the bigger games I used to play with some of Toronto’s wealthiest young businessmen, a $5/$5 NL hold ’em, $1,000 buy-in* cash game that saw a lot of aggression coupled with questionable play and usually ended the night with five-figure pots.
* At the start of the night. As stacks grew, wealthy players who wanted to buy in to match the big stacks would beg and eventually get what they were asking for.
Amongst the wealthiest members of the game was a guy we’ll identity protect by calling David. Incredibly wealthy and equally scatterbrained, David was the kind of guy who was always throwing around comments about the incredibly expensive thing he was buying or the high-end work he had being done on his house or lamenting which $200,000 car he should buy or bragging about the hundos he was actually taking a lighter and kerosene to for sh*ts and giggles…always with dollar totals attached. He was also on the high end of boorish and more than a little oblivious to his surroundings, all of which made him cartoonish. The man never envisioned a boast he didn’t like, an obnoxious trait that I think was in part only embraced because his skill at poker was roughly equivalent to his capability for subtlety.
Anyways, a little over a year ago, right after the Haitian earthquake, David walked into our poker game with a smug little smile on his face. He was obviously feeling pretty good, so when he sat down and was inevitably asked what was going on, he came ready with his latest boast. “I donated 50,000 green boxes to the Haitian effort.”
Now, on first glance, this was a pretty nice gesture. Yes, David is rich beyond rich and yes, he owns a large manufacturer and distributor of such things, but 50,000 of anything is a nice gesture. Thing is, when you stop to think about the imagery of tens of thousands of Haitians –their homes destroyed, their lives in ruins– throwing their leftovers in their shiny new green bins despite having no one to collect them and nowhere to take it, you can’t help but chuckle a little bit. When we chuckled at that poker game, the chorus inevitably turned the din to a roar. David heard about it all night until a couple of hours in, he placed a call and canceled the order. I think he donated some money instead.
Friday, I finally finished the herculean job of finding, cleaning and sorting through all of the clothing I’ve accumulated for the last fifteen+ years and figuring out what I’ll wear ever again. The winners are neatly put away in drawers and closets. I dropped off the losers at a clothing donation box.
As Heather and I were dumping the rest, she noticed a sign mentioning that all clothing deposited in our particular box would go to disaster relief. As with David’s green boxes, it was a nice sounding gesture at first until Heather and I realized my XXL clothing would be going to starving Haitians and wiry Japanese people. Thinking further, I’m envisioning sumo wrestlers in faded early 90’s sweaters with wonky collars and loose threads, while pairs of Haitian siblings or even couples walk awkwardly down the street sharing one of my t-shirts. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.
I owe David an apology. It’s the thought that counts.
