My Riverboat Gambler

What woman hasn’t at one time or another felt that Scarlett O’Hara was the luckiest and the dumbest female ever?  She had the dashing and charming Rhett Butler completely and yet she pined for the spineless, non-descript Ashley Wilkes.  Besides all his other assets, Rhett was mysterious and slightly notorious like the riverboat gamblers I grew up reading about.  The gambler always gave up his wicked ways to woo and win the fair lady.  As a young girl I imagined being that fair lady and there is the basis for this memory.
 Shortly after B.J. Thomas came out with I Just Can’t Help Believing I met my riverboat gambler and was immediately intrigued.  He finally asked me to join him for a drink and that’s when I learned that he was married.  I knew right then I should walk away, but I didn’t.  His wife, his buddy and he assured me, was that in name only.  I won’t go into all the gory details, but suffice to say I believed them both.  He on the other hand was not convinced that he could ever be worthy of someone like me.  Starting right then I set out to prove that “this time the girl is going to stay”.  For six months I stayed faithful and supportive through a roller coater romance that left me breathless and bewildered.  In the end the girl stayed, but it wasn’t enough.  He returned to the alcoholic and unfaithful wife, because of two children—not his, but their hold was just as great.  They were the children of a service buddy that had been killed serving his country and this pitiful excuse for a mother was all the family they had.  They needed and trusted him to protect them.
 When I hear this song the memories are sweet in spite of everything, because after all I held “Rhett Butler” in my heart and life if only for a little while.