Playing poker teaches you things that you didn’t want to know about yourself. For example: I don’t bluff.

You think I would have figured this out on my own, but this weekend it took someone else whispering to another player: “Don’t worry, Greg doesn’t bluff.”

The words flew at me and lodged themselves in my gut.  I stared at my cards, and realized it was true.  When I look at my cards, I simply see my cards.  I don’t see possibility or opportunity.  I deal with the hand I’m played.

And here I thought I was such a student of House of Pain.  That august musical assembly taught us all a valuable lesson with their catchy dance classic “Jump,” which featured the smash hit lyrics:

But I ain’t going out like no punk bitch
Get used to one style and you know I might switch

But for some reason, I don’t switch styles.  I play cards very literally. And it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with theme, metaphor, and allegory; you should see my old copy of The Great Gatsby.  On one page, I underlined every third transitive verb and wrote “Hmmm--interesting!” and in the margins I added “Rich people suck.”

Nonetheless, I don’t bluff.  In thinking back over my life, I realize that I never have bluffed.  When confronted with a childhood bully who asked “You think I can take you?” My response was “I will tell you what can take me.  My legs.  I will now run away, just like I will each and every time I encounter you for the remainder of the school year.”

Or my first day teaching, when I stood in front of a room full of students and announced “This is my first day.  I am warning you now in advance: if you look at me in even a slightly disrespectful or even bored fashion, I will burst into childlike tears.”

This needs to change.  I am not going out like a--how do you say?--punk bitch.  In cards, in life, and even on this site, I will become a better bluffer.

You won’t know when I’m bluffing. See, that’s the point of bluffing; you don?t announce it.  This much I have learned. And I will bluff regularly now.  It will not be apparent. It will not be obvious.  But it will happen.

So you just ponder that while I relax here in my mountaintop villa, reviewing my vast oil holdings and thinking about all the women I satisfied last night.