[MaTH716]

My wife (and her whole family) are/were degenerate numbers players. In fact the first time I went to their house for dinner, we were all sitting eating when all of a sudden someone yelled "THE BALLS THE BALLS" and everyone made a break for the living room. Suddenly I was sitting all by myself. About a minute later everyone came back to the table. What happened was the whole family ran to watch the drawing for the daily NY number. Also my mother-in-law (the head degenrate when it comes to numbers and scratch off tickets) works as an operator at OTB. So my wife has gambling bloodlines. She was more of an Atlantic City roulette gambler, but she did adapt nicely to Horse Racing. We would go to Monmouth almost every Saturday in the summer and then go to dinner on the way home. She would read cosmo while I was studying the form. I will never forget the day she hit a $300 exacta the first race after studing the program for about a minute while I was in the form for about an hour. After cashing her ticket, she told my to keep studying as she went back to her Cosmo. She did love Saratoga, except when I dragged her to Saratoga Harness at night. She thought that place was a dump. We are going to try to make it up there this summer for the first time in 5 years. These days she is too busy playing mommy, so she hardly has anytime for herself. So racing is the last thing on her mind when she has a minute. But overall she is a great sport about it, and (almost) never breaks my horns about it. I do hear a little grief about my son having 2 Secretariat and 2 Left Bank pictures on the walls of his room and Seabiscuit, War Admiral and Barbaro beanie babies. And when she hears him say "Daddy look at that Gray speed horse on the rail with the blinkers, I think he is gone" then I do get a couple of dirty looks.