THE SAILOR AND THE CARD PLAYER

A sailor was drinking with a card player with a skin complaint.

The player’s hands looked sore and blistered, his fingers swollen with peeling skin and bloated knuckles.

 ‘You’ll be alright, mate,’ the sailor, making light of it, chuckles. ‘Only,’ he frowns at the player’s fingers, ‘how do you think you got it?’

‘I’ll tell you what it wasn’t,’ the player, beginning to explain, frowns. ‘It wasn’t because I shook hands with clowns or wiped them on my dressing gowns…’

The sailor swallowed his drink and after a lengthy pause is on the brink of repeating his question.

But, raising his hands, the player understands.

He decides to put the sailor out of his misery.

‘The plain fact is that contaminated cards are the source of my affliction. I don’t know if they were poisonous or if I am allergic to that specific brand, but I’ll never play with them again!’

‘Fair enough,’ the sailor nods.

‘I’ll tell you this…’ In the air, the player’s podgy finger prods. ‘I won’t touch that pack again, unless I lose my brain, I’m telling you. I’m suffering so badly, I really am in pain!’

The sailor nodded sagely, but he thought his companion was nuts.

‘I’ve made up my mind,’ resumed the player. ‘No ifs, no buts, I’ll not go near those infernal cards ever again!’

‘Well that’s fair enough,’ said the sailor after an awkward silence. ‘One thing’s for sure, mind, this would never have happened to you if you’d been playing cards on board my ship.’

‘Oh, why?’

‘’Cos we always swab the decks, mate,’ the sailor guffawed. ‘We always swab the decks!’