I almost feel behooved to write a poker-related post today, plodding my way through some hand analysis or prolonging a tilt at a windmill or two. After all, a trip to the dentist for a temporary crown makes for nothing. Except when it leads to something else.

I think I finally figured out why I like curling as a sport. Curling is like life.

No, that won’t do. It is, but I’ll keep it to myself.

I am of sufficient longevity that I remember a dentist’s chair resembling more a barber’s chair than a couch. “Would you like me to turn on the back massager?”

“Do you have an attachment for my rotator cuff?”

The dentist’s office is relatively new, less than four years old, and built on the main drag in town. A lot of big timbers and green siding give it the feel of a mountain resort. He has a small dentistry museum inside, a 150-gallon marine fish tank, and about twelve rooms with chairs. One dentist.

I had a bit of a wait, so there I reclined, feeling and listening to the rhythm of the balls inside the chair back, country music softly playing over the PA system. My mind drifted off to my massage therapist back in Chicago.

Back then it was my left, not my good arm. The shoulder caused a lot of trouble, referring, as they call it, down to my fingers, down my back and over my chest. She worked hard to relieve me of the pain and get mobility back. She was gentle and forceful at the appropriate times, even-tempered and attractive in kind of a Heidi-grows-up way. I could not help but adore her.

But I was not attracted to her.

Not that I couldn’t have been if I hadn’t wanted first and foremost to employ the best massage therapist in town, and if my life’s many other considerations up to that point had taken a slightly different trajectory.

Yep, just like chess.