It was in a mall on a rainy Vancouver afternoon that I was inadvertently caught. A pro was selling Gold Crown pool tables and pocketing balls in rapid succession.
“Whoa!” He slammed the white ball into a red one which sped into a corner pocket, and the white ball returned right back at it him!
“What the…?” I stammered, “How’d you do that?”
Broad smile, gold front tooth, “Take a lesson.” he replied. How hard could it be with a straight stick and a smooth table with six holes? Then and there, I decided to invest a bit of time and money to learn the game.
Sometimes I wonder if I had taken a different route or visited another shopping center on that particular day, I might have become a Nobel Peace Prize winner or discovered a solution to world hunger. Instead, I have dedicated two decades and countless hours to practice, am still a novice at 68 years old. I am still at the table.
Around the same time, I was also caught by a local glass artist, Yves Trudeau, whom I fell in love with. He had a 10-year jump on me with the game. A born teacher, a lover of technique, perfection, and finesse, he found in me a willing student.
We worked together to master the fundamentals and extensively studied books and videos to comprehend the physics of the game. We recorded videos of each other to identify the slightest misalignments. Yves created a mobile full-length mirror to help us view our movements from different perspectives.
I place my cue near the white ball (cue ball) and visually line up the shot. My hand is placed 6 inches behind an imaginary line on the cue, and my right foot moves beneath my hand. My left foot moves 1.5 feet forward at a 45° angle. Hips bend straight back, right knee straight, left knee slightly bent, weight 80% on the left forefoot.
Now my right arm is the pendulum, the right hand cradles the cue as if it were a baby bird. Every finger, except the fifth, feels the cue’s weight equally. The left-hand bridge is firm on the table and lets the cue slip smoothly, in perfect rhythm.
The speed varies depending on the shot, but the rhythm stays the same. 123, set, pause, and accelerate through the cue ball; the tip lands on the table. Nothing moves but my right arm and my heart.
From the start, I was attracted to the beauty of small movements.
I recognized the complex body-mind pathways involved and noticed how any tiny change, intended or not, changed everything. The endless learning curve appealed to me—conscious concentration and repetition to achieve unconscious mastery.
I immersed myself in the pleasures of precision. A smooth stroke, the thrill of a cue ball dancing with precisely executed English, the elegance of a perfectly hit eight ball rolling into the centre of a pocket. An intense emotional roller coaster.
I endeavour to focus on what I want to achieve, simultaneously concentrate on several body parts, breathe calmly, and quiet my mind.
When any piece of this circuitry goes awry, the shot is missed—immediate feedback. I loved that. So unlike my work as a family doctor where, if there is feedback, it may come months or years later.
“Doctor, that advice you gave me ten years ago saved my life,” or “I tried your treatment, and it made me sick, so I stopped it last year.”
Yves and I teamed up with two seasoned players in my second year and entered a league.
These men were skipping school in primary to hang around pool halls, those dens of iniquity. Learning tricks, stealing smokes, and catching the odd nugget tossed their way by the pros, they were stung by the pool bug early, then developed their game as their lives unfolded.
When I was in primary, women were not allowed in pool halls. The ostensible explanation was that we ‘delicates’ must be shielded from the smoking, drinking, cussing, gambling, spitting, and who knows what else… that went on there. I remember my father leaving me and my sisters sweltering in the car, in the Saskatchewan summer, with a six-pack of Cokes while he went in ‘to shoot a few.’
Being the neophyte and losing almost every game I played for 15 years has given me much to chew on. I have quit the game and threatened to leave my relationship because of it numerous times.
A long cry, some fierce self-compassion, and a good shake…(think ‘duck shaking off rain droplets’) and I’d reemerge, jaws clenched. Ready to resume practice.
Men playing pool don’t say, “There, there, dear, you did your best.” They are generally nonverbal with expressionless faces, leaving me alone with my internal dialogue.
Facing self-criticism, feelings of inadequacy and disappointment head-on, I grew more determination, distress tolerance, resilience, and grit.
I am now the queen of the relaxation response and feel qualified to write the ultimate ‘self-soothing manual.’
Pool players represent a cross-section of male society; women are anomalies. There is a pie-shaped wedge in that section that I would be unlikely, at my age, to rub shoulders with. Young men.
A middle-aged woman does not usually have the opportunity to spend extended amounts of time with young men, and since I had no brothers, I have found this fascinating. After a time, when they would get used to me, they’d sidle up, tell me the most amazing things and ask the most surprising questions.
“Monica, how to catch a doctor like you, younger of course, who like to play pool,” asks Danijel, recently from Serbia.
A selfie at 3 a.m., face all bashed up – “Dr. Monica, should I go to hospital? I have no insurance.”
Or Lucky, who asks if he can put a considerable amount of money in my bank account for a short while.
Frankie, released from earth and his addictions in the summer of 2020, would walk across the pool hall to bow at the waist and kiss my hand when I sunk an eight ball.
One memorable Christmas invitational in Surrey, after 13 hours of play and innumerable beers, I saw Frankie break and put five balls down. I have never seen this before or since. His foot slipped as he stretched to pocket the eight, and his face planted on the table. This was deemed a foul, and he lost the game.
Observe the skinny guy with his butt crack exposed and a Blue Jays baseball cap on backward. Unable to walk a straight line, he tells his mates to ”Fuck off,” breaks the balls in an explosion, then clears the entire table without thought or aim. It gives me pause and lots to ponder.
My pool journey has taken me to Phoenix for a two-day private lesson with Jerry Brysak, a man who is now over 80 and began pool standing on a milk crate to reach the table. He dedicated his entire life to the game. He was the prototype of ‘Cool Hand Luke.’
The best advice I got was to “relax, wiggle around, get comfy, and forget what you’ve been told about body position.” Yves’ eyebrow shot up.
I have played on a cruise ship where the table was on a gyro, so the balls stayed put. I remember a memorable New Year’s Eve playing in a bathing suit on a beach in Belize, and reggae beats pounding the warm air.
On motorcycle trips, Yves and I often found ourselves in small-town bars in BC and Washington State. We met the locals – the good, bad, and the ugly.
“Play ya for a beer,” the posturing dude tosses my way.
“Rack ‘em up,” I flip back.
I’m careful, methodical, thoughtful, and unshakable. I hook him on the eight, and he angrily picks it up and throws it down a pocket. Cursing, he buys me a beer, and he ramps up his attitude when I refuse a rematch. I signal Yves to meet me at the door. We’ve been run out of a bar on more than one occasion, and once I (yes, gentle reader “I”) was close to fisticuffs with a girl who refused to remove her butt from the edge of my table.
I now have a better sense of my fundamentals. I am relaxed and comfortable at the table, win the occasional game, and enjoy myself. “I got this” is what I say to Yves after a win.
My friends ask me how I was able to hang in. I tell them it’s because I’m a Capricorn. But closer to the truth is that my relationship may not have survived Yves’ late nights and weekends at the glass studio without pool. He worked, I practised shots, and we were together. Both happy and challenged.
Our retirement plan is to find a senior’s home with a pool table where we can kick ass and clean up. (wink)
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