I haven’t played poker since I was about 12. My cousins and I all learned to play one summer… I haven’t played poker since I was about 12. My cousins and I all learned to play one summer while we were staying together in a beach house in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We hadn’t picked up any respectable vices yet, so this was what we waited for “the parents” to shuffle off to bed for.

I sucked.

I was painfully bad, and the reason has stuck with me long after those late summer nights.

I have no poker face. I am incapable of keeping my thoughts from being broadcast by my face. I am just not cool like that.

I’m the kid who can’t keep it together when someone has some smutch on his face. If you want to pull something over on someone, don’t tell me about it – I’ll grin at her like a demented clown who’s had too much boxed wine. What’s worse, I have no idea I’m even doing it. Sometimes, it’s just funny. Like last week:

It was 2:30 on a weekday afternoon. I was headed toward a bus stop Downtown. About 10 yards in front of me, I saw a man get ready to lose it. His face bore the look of impending doom.

He blew chunks all over the sidewalk and into the street. In broad daylight! In sleepy ol’ Dahntahn! Mmmm, SpaghettiOs!

But I digress.

I picked my way oh-so-delicately toward the bus stop. The way was fraught with peril, but my stiletto boots and I made it unsullied, I thought.

An elderly woman and a hip-hop boy were sharing a hysterical laugh at me when I got there – it’s amazing how toilet humor crosses age and gender lines. Anyway, once I started inspecting my cuffs for stray upchuck, the boy decided to put me out of my misery.

“We don’t know what was funnier, watching him hurl or watching you watch him!” His face twisted in an apparent parody of my comedic grimace. Great. Cue sheepish look.

Sometimes my idiocy in the realm of discretion is less ha-ha funny, and more maybe-I’ll-get-my-ass-kicked-later funny. Case in point – eighth grade.

This may shock you, but I was a giant loser in those days. No one “cool” liked me and I was painfully aware of this. So I took the only logical route out of middle-school dorkdom. In retrospect, I would have been better off getting a mullet and headgear.

I decided cheerleading was the sport for me. That’s where all the cool girls were, including the captain, Shannon – the prettiest girl ever to win schoolyard brawls time after time.

I hated her. She was beautiful, rich and popular. And kind of dumb.

My mom came to pick me up from tryouts one afternoon in our decidedly-uncool Plymouth. Wonder of wonders, Shannon waved to me as we pulled away. I waved back and I thought I smiled.

“Don’t like her, huh?” Mom asked.

How did she know that?

“Why would you make a face like that at anyone?”

I didn’t make the squad.

I’m constantly getting called on in class when someone says something I “secretly” think is ridiculous.

“Melissa, you seem to disagree …”

Oh well. I guess I won’t make my fortunes in Atlantic City after all.

Melissa Meinzer honestly stinks at most games of skill. Ante up at [email protected].