How To Play Pool As If You Were A Good Person.

By all means, avoid the blue ball.

Glasses will smash, noses will be blooded, and conversations will be rudely interrupted, all on account of the blue ball not actually being there whilst you swipe full-force at it.

The red, yellow and white however- they’re you’re business. Like the colours of the flag of pool (we’re going to need one of those).

First things first, you need to step back, then forward again so as to assault the table in every sense of the word. Whether or not people are watching you- either they’ll remember you, or the table sure as hell will.

Then we’ll leave you alone, once we’ve dragged you away from the green and that’ll be that for a while.

You’re a good person now, so just give yourself five minutes to enjoy that feeling and then breathe deeply once and make your way back inside.

Although fact that the table is inside is part of the problem.

Naturally- you’re drinking throughout your pool performance. The violence is natural, the pool is natural and the drink is natural- all you need now are some natural surroundings, so a nice meadow in which to enjoy a game of pool is increasingly important now. Have yourself a pool table, and stick a meadow underneath it.

The reason for the act of violence being natural is that it’s svelte, not the violence, the pool table. The violence is not so much svelte as much as it is loud and eventually leaky.

We rarely encounter that which is svelte in our day to day lives. Apart from babies- they’re fairly svelte, but they haven’t got the arrogance of a pool table. If violence feels svelte to you- then you must’ve been practising.

A pool table will stand there as though it’s clever to have four legs and no skirt on, arrogant and obviously pompous- because somehow it’s winning without playing, whilst also swallowing my balls and not giving them back. It only gives the white ball back, but only so that you can prolong your own agony as you don’t succeed in potting the correct ball and wishing that the blue ball was real.

The house always wins, but you can change the interior before you are made to leave. This doesn’t mean that you should wallpaper the walls, but it does mean that you should take some wallpaper home with you, and perhaps a couple of bricks. The same method applies to pool. Make sure that this cheeky table remembers you- you’re going to lose but leave it a pretty little scar.

That is good pool. Though it may well sour relations with the next player who might well, and justly so, enquire as to why their pool table is scarred and why you have a mouthful of wallpaper. You’re appropriate response is: “Go and do likewise fella, now excuse me…I have a need to flee”.

So the violence is natural.

The pool is natural too, and ties in very smoothly with the naturalness of the drinking.

Drinking is natural owing to the fact that…here it is! Nature is a matter of opinion, with “death by natural causes” being the most debateable.

If I’m eaten by a mountain lion (fine- as long as I truly deserve it) then there really is little more-natural a death to be had by this talkative ape here. But, the police, and hopefully my family, would freak out at the fact that technically I died from being chewed. For some mountain-born kid in the…mountains…it’s likely that being eaten by a mountain lion is comparable for him to a kid in New York dying from being hit by a car. Tragic, and it doesn’t happen to everyone (someone has to be the driver), but- it’s not unnatural. Maybe what’s natural is what’s common in your habitat.

Drinking is happening all around; my town has a raging alcohol and budding weed problem. So it’s natural.

I believe that we have an urge to flaunt the mind’s capabilities when we are drinking, and so either some strong conversation, testy little quiz or a bit of hand-eye co-ordination is what we need at the time of the consumption of alcohol. This is why darts boards, quiz machines and pool tables are found in bars and pubs.

Conversations can also be found here, although they tend to be free of charge. Maybe they won’t be for long, as good conversation can be hard to find and lonely people are plentiful- a very valuable resource for those that sell things in the place of a social life. ‘Whoring your vocal chords’ is how it must be put, since ‘whoring your mouth’ is rather more misleading and much more popular.

All in all, to ensure you’re playing pool as if you’re a good person; be sure to leave the pool hall a little different to how it was when you arrived. Preferably with other people leaving their mouths open as they watch you waddle out with in a funny fashion because you groined the table in a moment of 17 century sexuality- in which you became so aroused by the sight of naked table legs that you grabbed a leg and beat it with it, whilst also beating, with the aforementioned leg,…off.

But how does this relate to you being a good person?

Well, aside from doing what is natural (apologies for not being able to find an alternative word for ‘natural’), you are making a difference.

Change is good, whilst change is also bad, eventually in a good way. If it hadn’t been for the horrors of the holocaust, then the best of human nature would not have been displayed, nor would we have the option to generally be against the holocausts- a cause most aggressively espoused by more good people than bad. So, as an aside, if you want to play pool as if you’re a good person, then play it whilst also being against the holocaust.

Make change of the world’s arse (GHETTO LANGUAGE USED IN WIT- THANKS FOR READING), and then things will be continuing exactly as it always has- constantly changing, hopefully evolving, possibly just changing- lacking a point for which to do so being the reason for it being so.

Sudden and shocking action, unto a room unexpecting it, is a favour to all. Particularly if you don’t know any of them as it is the finest of conversation starters.

Think of it as a social call to those few others that might be there want to contribute to the sudden action. Having a point to the action, let us call it…’momentum’…is something that might matter, as opposed to most things that happen, and do not matter.

Play pool as a good person by making a difference; any way you choose, but I recommend the sudden and shocking method as a call out to the people that might also want to leave the room, which is temporarily the world, a little different from how it was when you first arrived.

That’s about it. The ethos of ‘make change’ prevails above most others- even the one about helping old ladies cross the street- and change is natural, change is good.

You are natural; you are good.

Be natural.

Sam