I used to be pretty good at pool. Through my 30s, I’d hit the bars around Dupont Circle with friends and we’d spend hours at the table just playing for fun. I loved it. By my 40s, I wasn’t playing much anymore—I was traveling more and bar nights got fewer and far between—and even now that I’m back home in Kentucky with a pool table in the basement, I still don’t pick up a cue nearly as often as I used to.
It’s not entirely by choice, though. When family or friends come over and gather around the table, I’m often just… waiting. Everyone’s talking between turns, catching up, laughing—and because I’m deaf, I’m entirely on the outside of the conversation, just sitting there waiting for someone to remember it’s not their turn anymore. And my dad’s buddy? He’s always drunk, takes forever to finish a game, frequently forgets which balls he’s even supposed to be hitting, and somehow still thinks he’s running the table. By the time it’s actually my shot, I’ve already lost interest. Between his pace and my bad shots, the whole thing just fizzles out.
My dad, though—he’s good. Wins most of the time. That part hasn’t changed.
All of which got me thinking. I was randomly scrolling through my emails just now and stumbled on an article about the history of pool, and I learned something I didn’t know.
What got me was Louis XI of France apparently being the first to purchase a billiard table back in 1470. Early iterations of the game didn’t have the six pockets we know today; instead, they eventually featured just a single hole at the center, like an indoor putting green. The rules were completely different, too—medieval players had to pass their ball through a hoop and tap a pin without knocking it down. One king buys a table, it becomes a royal pastime, and somehow centuries later it ends up in bars and basements everywhere.
And the green felt? That wasn’t an aesthetic choice. It was meant to mimic the grass the game was originally played on outdoors. The table is the lawn.
Now it’s a game I play when I feel like it. Sometimes my dad asks if I want to join them—whether it’s down in the basement or over at the family friends’ place—it really just depends on my mood. But pool will always have a place in my life. Maybe it’s time I actually practice and beat my dad more than half the time.