Chapter 15: 19 is Payday: BioVlog 131 of 384
I’ve bet the proprietor double or nothing for the carpet, and now it is time to slam shut the trap.
The store owner pauses for a moment, and then happily agrees. “Okay, I’ll take that bet!” he says handing over a large stack of his business hand-outs. “Now let me see you cut off nineteen cards!”
Without any hesitation, I pluck off a packet of cards with the fingers and thumb of my right hand, hand them to the guy, and say with a feigned touch of hesitancy, “Count them and see who got lucky.”
He slowly counts them aloud, dealing them one at a time onto his desk as though he is counting hundred-dollar bills (which, ironically, he is). “Seventeen, eighteen,” and then he hit my payday number, “nineteen.”
As soon as he dealt the nineteenth card, he gasps as if he was just sucker punched. He graciously says, “Well, a bet’s a bet…I guess the carpet is yours.”