Celebrating milestones

Everyone's heard of becoming a Life Master, right? Well, ok, make that anyone who's actually reading a blog about bridge. But the ACBL has created a whole bunch of intermediate steps between 0 and the 300 points (of various types) required for Life Master status. They knew that normal mortals (you know, people who aren't going to go from 0 points to 300 in six months) would get discouraged once they figured out how long it would actually take to get to Life Master. On my optimistic days, I figure that it's going to take me about six years, since I work full time.

I don't know about your club, but in my neck of the woods, when someone makes Life Master, there's a big party, hosted (to varying extents) by the honoree. This is pretty cool, actually, and gives us poor losers with fewer than 50 points some hope for someday being there ourselves. But, you know, it's kind of hard to imagine ever getting there when you have years and years to wait. And it doesn't help that those wonderful Life Masters also trounce you just about every time you play. 

But those of us making lesser levels, like Junior Master (5 points, and they're the 5 hardest points you'll ever earn) or Club Master (20 points) or Sectional Master (50 points) or Regional Master (100 points) or NABC Master (200 points) only get a mention in the club newsletter. Now, a mention in the club newsletter is nothing to sneeze at, especially when they spell your name right. And the ACBL does send you a new membership card for each level (I hope that wasn't your only motivation). But, gosh, wouldn't some kind of party be nice?

My terrific partner, Jan, and I had a conversation about that one night when I was driving her home. I should mention that we live in a relatively small town in a rural area, so we weren't driving through urban splendor on the way to Jan's house. We passed a neighborhood bar, FatBoyz, that listed itself as being in "Downtown Trowbridge." I really can't adequately describe how un-downtown any part of Trowbridge is--some people keep their own chickens. 

Fat Boyz was advertising a Friday night Fish Fry with Jello shots, a combination that Jan and I found hysterically funny (this might be our problem--no offense to anyone who eats their fish fry with jello shots on a regular basis). The availability of a free van for taking home patrons who'd had too many jello shots also charmed us. We agreed that, when I made my Club Master, we were having the party at Fat Boyz. Of course, earlier in our partnership, we'd agreed that we'd have our Life Master party on one of those incredibly expensive party boats, cruising around the lake with a band. We figure that we have plenty of time to save up for that.

Every time we drove by Fat Boyz, we'd elaborate on our plan, to the point where we were imagining having the shuttle come pick us all up after a game (Fat Boyz has multiple shuttles, so we could imagine the whole club going). To be honest, I could picture quite a few of our club members having a pretty darn good time at Fat Boyz, although you might not think it to look at them. 

We started to tell people that we were having the party at Fat Boyz when I made my Club Master. We even learned a bit about the place--that it reportedly has the best cheesesteak in town, for example. One member of the club started laughing hysterically when we told her our plan. Turns out she once darted into the place (when it was called something else) to use the bathroom. Well, the route to the ladies' room was rather convoluted, so when she finally got to the door, she just threw it open and dashed in--only to be confronted by a guy in front of a urinal who said, "well, hello, honey!" 

I had always figured that the party at Fat Boyz probably wouldn't happen. However, at the Sunday afternoon Swiss Teams game that took place after I had earned enough points to make my Club Master, our Club Manager announced that the Fat Boyz van would be coming after the game to pick up everyone who wanted to celebrate my Club Master. And it did! 

I was stunned. Jan had arranged the whole thing, including the van. So about eight of us piled into the van and headed over to Fat Boyz to eat supper. The food was actually quite good, although we lost one of our party to the smoke--she couldn't take it. We had a wonderful time We didn't even have any trouble finding the ladies' room--they must have remodeled.

I think that we might have had as many people there as we had Master Point levels represented. It was a terrific opportunity to just hang out with people without a card table.

We're now trying to figure out where to celebrate Jan's Regional Master. It should be somewhere nicer than Fat Boyz (maybe non-smoking?) but not too spiffy. After all, we're not talking a Life Master celebration.