The Last Bet

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In Nigeria, a lot of people believe that sport betting has a spirit attached to it, the spirit to want to play more even if you’re losing or winning. I know that isn’t true as the urge to want to play more regardless of the result you’re getting comes with everything that is related to gambling. Some of my friends will say gambling is demonic and I couldn’t agree more.

And by demonic, we don’t mean the whole evil spirit, getting possessed kind of stuff, we mean playing and not leaving until your pocket gets dry. It’s something we can control but choose not to probably because of greed or because we want to win back the money we’ve lost.

I used to be a very chronic sport gambler and I said “used to” because I stopped a few years back. But before I quit sport gambling (football to be precise) I learnt one thing, that every gambler has one thing in common, a story to tell.

Go to a bet shop and all you will hear until you leave is stories of how they used money belonging to other people to play bets and of course lost it in the process, well here’s mine.

A few years back I had taken the last cash I had with me to the bet shop with hopes of multiplying it. I was very young and stupid so while you’re reading this, just have that in mind.

Anyways, it sure didn’t go as planned so I was left with nothing, but you see I was determined, so I did what I never should have done, I went to my elder brother’s bag and took some of his money with hopes of returning it when I win from the sport betting.

Of course that also didn’t go as planned, so I came back, collected some more and went back to face destiny. I did this repeatedly until the bag ran out of cash and that was when it all dawned on me. I was the only one at home so I couldn’t lie not to know what happened to the money. If it had been a few change, then maybe denying everything could work. But you see, I emptied the bag, so I was in some deep shit.

It finally got to evening and everyone was back home. I was sweating profusely even though the weather wasn’t hot. I knew waiting for my brother to find out himself would be more disastrous, so I came up with a plan. I went to meet the one person in the house I knew would go easy on me and told her everything, my mom.

But you see, instead of telling her the truth, I told her that I broke someone’s phone and had no choice but to take money from my brother’s bag in other to pay the person. The lie wasn’t a solid one but I guess my face must have looked like I had a face to face encounter with the grim reaper himself, so she had called my brother and explained to him.

Of course he got upset, but not as upset as I thought he would be. Well luckily for me, no one tried to strangle me with a pillow throughout the night so I guess he decided to let me go and that was when I vowed never ever to gamble again.


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