Whether you're playing a game of poker or a taking a leap of faith with your future, everything has its risks and possible rewards. In this week’s episode, both of our storytellers share moments when they took a chance.

Part 1: Beatriz Perez’s parents want her to use her first pay check to gamble on the slot machines.

Beatriz Perez: I'm a Mexican-American computer engineer working in Massachusetts. I thrive on finding new things to try out and putting myself outside of my comfort zone, hence my new interest for story telling. I have a deep passion for empowering women and young girls in STEM. During the weekends you'll find me traveling to a random country, crafting, working on a new project, or reading a good book.

Part 2: Dave Piontkowski is on a winning streak in Vegas when his severe ulcerative colitis rears its ugly head.

Dave Piontkowski is an NYC based stand-up comedian who performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2023 and 2024 with his one man show 3 Kidneys No Colon which he is currently touring with.

Episode Transcript

Part 1

Jackpot! The loud music and slot machines surround my parents and I as we walk through the smoke‑filled game room. We still have our warm coffees in our hands, complimentary from the casino, of course.

As I'm walking through the aisles, I'm mesmerized by the craziness and chaos all around me when, suddenly, I'm pulled onto the black final chair with a too bright screen in front of me.

My eyes are starting to adjust and I'm making out the slot machine. In front of me, I see animals. Monkeys, elephants and giraffes are dancing, calling my name, telling me to put my money in and test my luck.

I look down at the purse in my lap and I open it to see my first paycheck. My first paycheck from my first job working as an electrical engineer. My first job straight out of college, already making six figures. I feel proud of myself. And as I look over at my mom and I look over at my dad, I see them nodding at me and encouraging me to use the fruits of my labor and gamble it.

You see, I know the odds of winning are low and I don't really want to gamble it. But my parents want me to, so I just do.

I take a crisp $20 bill out of my purse and I feed it into the machine. I look over at my dad and he's smiling and I started to get excited. The monkeys, elephants and giraffes are dancing, but then my $20 slowly groups of ten and then to five. My first paycheck from my first job and I'm already losing it.

This actually wasn't my first job. I actually had my first job when I was ten. Every Sunday at 5:00 PM on the dot, my dad would pack up my family and I in our little black Ford Explorer and drive us to a park a few miles away from our home in Oklahoma. My little sister and I would sit in the back seat, wedged between tables and coolers and chairs. My dad would put the hot pot of corn, or elotes as we call it, in between my sister and I, and we both had the job of each grabbing on to the handle.

And my dad's a crazy driver so, with every twist and turn, we'd have to hold on a little harder hoping we didn't get third‑degree burns. You see, my family sold Mexican snacks at the park on Sunday to try to get a little bit more money to make ends meet.

As we pulled out to the park, I would look over and see my friends in the playground. I wish I could go play with them but I can't. I have a job to do. At 10, I was the cash register. My parents, they depend on me. My mom and sister use the calculator, where they all somehow fumble up the numbers and make my family lose money.

But my dad, he insists I use my mind and encouraged me to use my brain. I think my dad knew my love of math even before I did.

Every Monday through Saturday, my dad would walk home from work with dirt and sweat caked on his face. His legs were so tired they’d barely be able to drag him in. He'd have to get changed into clean clothes, and he'd always catch me looking at him and giggling.

He'd say, “Betty, what's so funny? Why are you laughing at me?"

And I'd have to explain, "Dad, it's because you look just like Neapolitan ice cream."

My dad would look at me with a weird look and say, "Betty, what's Neapolitan ice cream? Why is that so funny?"

And silly dad, I had to explain to him, "Let me tell you, It's because your skin, it's so sunburnt and sun damaged. It's as brown as chocolate. Your skin freshly burnt and so bright, it's as pink as strawberry. And when you take your shirt off, your belly is as white as vanilla.”

My dad would look over at me and give me a weird look. He'd laugh it off but I don't really think he thought that joke was funny.

Late at night, I'd walk into the kitchen to get a late‑night snack and I'd catch my dad hovered over the table jotting down in his notebooks. He'd look over at me and call me over and say, "Betty, have you learned this in school yet?" And when I'd say no, his eyes would glow up and he'd teach me how to find the surface area of a chimney or the circumference of a fire pit. And then he'd wait for the thousands of questions I'd ask, excited to answer every single one of them.

I think my dad really liked talking math to me since he could actually teach me things because, often, I had to be the one to teach him. Every Sunday morning in our fancy church clothes, my dad would walk up to the McDonald's cashier and order “un panques” for breakfast.

The cashier would tilt his head and give him the weirdest look, and my dad would look over at me with a shrug and a smile. I'd say, “Pan cake,” then I'd proceed to teach my dad the whole McDonald's breakfast menu and how to pronounce it in proper English.

Whenever my mom had a doctor's appointment and she needed a translator, I'd have to sit with my dad the night before and teach him how to call me out of school. I'd have to teach him how to say my name in English, since he didn't know how to say that and the office ladies wouldn't know my name in Spanish.

I'd go over with him, “Beatrice Perez, Miss Fosters, fourth grade.” He'd anxiously be jotting it all down in the journal.

I was always excited to get called out of school, just as long as my dad agreed not to call me out during math class, because it was my favorite time of the school day. Well, that is, after lunch.

One week in math class, we learned about fractions and percentages, and that's when I realized my dad may be good at geometry with all his construction stuff, but I don't think he's really good at statistics. The percentage of people that actually win a few bucks from the lottery is really less than 1%, but I don't think he really understood that because every single Friday, he'd come up to me with five new lottery tickets, still sticky and sweaty from being in his pocket all week. He'd asked me to check them because he didn't know how.

But because of the odds, I had to be the one to break it to him that we weren't a part of that 1% and we weren't winners, but he kept buying them every single week. Honestly, I think he envisioned a future for us with those tickets, a future where we didn't have to sell at the park on Sunday, a future where he could buy my family anything we ever dreamed of without having to work in the hot heat. A future where he didn't have to depend on his oldest daughter.

Over ten years, week after week, I was slowly met with the familiar truth that we'd have to sell at the park again on Sunday. As I chipped away at my dad's dream, I always wondered, "If he knew the odds, would he still have hope?"

Back at the slot machines with my parents, my disappointment is continuing to grow, more when I look over at my dad and I see the frown on his face. My parents were probably expecting me to be a winner, but I failed them.

Suddenly, the monkeys, elephants in drafts aren't just singing, they're dancing. My $5 turns it to ten, a hundred, finally 500. The machine is going off. The probability of me winning was low, but, somehow, I did it.

Through the love of math that my dad helped me explore and the independence I've gained as the oldest daughter, I've made it as an engineer. I don't have to worry about the money struggles my immigrant parents did. And my future kids, they can play with their friends on Sunday, just like I always wished I could.

I did it. I won the lottery. And as I look over at my mom and I look over at my dad, and I see the way they look and smile at me, I just know they think they've won it too.

Part 2

Hey, guys. So, I suffer from severe ulcerative colitis. A round of applause if you're familiar with it? Okay. For those that don't know, it's inflammation of the colon. It means I shit more than all of you combined. I go to the bathroom a lot and this wrecked my 20s.

My 20s, a majority was just spent trying different medications to figure out what do you do about this colitis? How do you solve it? How do you get healthy? Nothing was working, medication after medication.

Eventually, by my late 20s, I was at the point of trying clinical trials, high‑risk clinical trials. And even those didn't work. I was so depressed.

Colitis at its peak, symptoms for me, I would go to the bathroom 15 times a day, maybe more. Yeah. You don't want to leave the house, become like an in‑cell. You just don't want to do anything. Oh, my God, it's a brutal, brutal disease.

I had little medications that helped a little bit but, to do the clinical trial, I had to get off of everything. Everything. And I don't know if I got a placebo or if I got the real thing, but whatever I got, it didn't work. I needed surgery. I knew I needed surgery.

Right at that point is when my brother John called me up. John, my brother, he runs a business selling wrestling figures on the internet. John, if you're listening, that's the biggest laugh so far.

So, yeah, he got some cool hookups, and one of the cool hookups he got was for the UFC. They were doing toys and he was working with them. He got complimentary tickets to their big Fourth‑of‑July weekend show.

And he said, "Hey, Dave I got these tickets. I got complimentary hotel room. Just have to figure out the flight. Do you want to come?”

At the time, I'm pooping, like, 15 times a day, should not be going to Las Vegas. I live in New York. It's a big trip for a guy who does that much shitting.

And I said, “You know what? Screw it. I'm going to go.” I'm going to go because I knew I needed surgery and I thought, “What if this is the last trip I take? What if the surgery goes wrong and I never get to travel again? I have to take this opportunity. I have to do something to get out of this rut.” It had just been so crippling for me. So, I said yes.

And before I could even get on a flight from New York to Las Vegas, my mother emailed me articles about everyone who got murdered in Las Vegas that week, in case my anxiety wasn't high enough with the crapping all the time, but okay.

So I get on the flight. I used every bathroom on that plane. I bombed so many bathrooms that I should be on the no‑fly list. It was aisle C, of course, because I had to move around a lot, but I made it through the flight and I got to Las Vegas.

Now, my brother comes up to me and he says, “Hey, we're going to get dinner with some of my corporate contacts at UFC.”

And I'm like, “Oh, great,” except I'm not really eating much at the time. Because I'm going to the bathroom so much, I'm barely eating at home. There would be days where my colitis was so severe, I would have one can of tuna for the entire day. I would starve myself. You guys think Ozempic is a good weight loss drug? Trial colitis. Oh, my God, I was so thin. I was so thin.

So we go to this dinner and now I'm afraid to eat anything because I'm not on any medications to help me out. I'm just kind of riding the wave of like I have peak colitis symptoms. And this is a Michelin‑star restaurant. The finest foods you could want. Yeah. A5 Wagyu, bluefin tuna, and I can’t touch anything.

But I'm hungry. I have to eat something. It was so tempting. I eat a little here, I eat a little there. Before I know it, I'm going to the bathroom half a dozen times. I go to the bathroom so much that the bathroom attendant became my doorman. Yeah, I would see the guy…

First off, his name was Vincent. I started giving him a nickname by the second trip. I'm like, "Hey, Vinny." I started getting his backstory through the times I'm going into this bathroom. He's from Brooklyn, separated from his wife. He's out here, got into some gambling debt, and now he's working as a bathroom attendant at this restaurant.

But he's a nice guy. He's from Brooklyn, I'm from Long Island or local. I'm like, “Oh yeah? Okay.”

Vinny's real cool to me, even though I'm just destroying in the bathroom and he is feet away. I feel so bad for him.

And by the end, like the sixth, seventh, I'm just like, “Vinny, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I took so many dumps in your office.”

And Vinny was so cool. He's like, “Hey, don't worry about it. Everybody takes a dump in my office.”

I'm like, “Look, well, here's something for your trouble.” I pulled out 20 bucks, tipped him. I know. If you knew what he went through, you'd be like, “That's low.” But it was a big tip.

His eyes lit up. He's like, “Hey, anything you want. You want candy, you want cologne, anything, take it. You got it.”

I'm like, “Vinny, I'm good.”

And then as I'm leaving, he goes, “How about some cocaine?”

“Vinny, the only way I'm touching that cocaine is if you cut it up with Imodium.” I was not in the state of mind, or my body in the state to be doing any of that.

But I go to the UFC show and now, throughout the UFC show, I'm just rooting for quick knockouts and first‑round finishes. I want maximum toilet time, okay? The longer they're in the clinch, the longer I'm in the clinch.

And I am just praying I can make it through the show. And I did, I did. I had a good time in spite of my illness. I wrap up with this UFC show and my brother's friend is with us.

He turns to me and he goes, “Hey, do you want to go gamble?”

I'm like, “Yeah, sure.”

He's like, “What game do you think we should play?”

I was like, “Oh, how about craps?” I mean, kind of fits what I'm doing a lot. So, yeah, let's play craps.

And he's like, “Oh, yeah.” So we go play craps.

Now, I've played craps a few times, not super familiar with it. Just a round of applause if you've played craps, you're familiar with the game or you… Okay, so I'm going to have to explain it. Not casino people at Story Collider. We're good, all good. That's okay.

So craps, it's a dice‑based game. It's at a big table and everyone bets on the person rolling the dice, what they're rolling, if they're winning or losing. And like 95% of people bet that the person who's rolling is winning.

So, everyone, as you're rolling, people are excited. They're winning as well. And I have the dice in my hands and I'm rolling and I'm winning. I got frat bros high‑fiving me, like, “Sick, bro.”

As my chip stack is getting bigger, I got prostitutes eyeing me out. “Maybe he's not so sickly and thin.”

Oh, my God, I had Elvis impersonators in the corner. Every time I'd roll their number, they go, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

It was amazing. I don't know if you've ever been on this high, but it's incredible, for about 10 to 15 minutes, until my stomach starts responding. I got to use the bathroom. I got to poop.

I can't leave the game because I'm rolling the dice, but I figure, “Okay, well, I'll just explain the situation to my friend. No big deal.”

I turned to him and I said, "Hey, so I got to use the bathroom, so I'm going to go and you just roll the dice.”

He's like, "No, that's not how it works. You're rolling and you're winning, so you're staying."

And I go, "Yeah, but I might have an accident.”

Then he points to his chip stack and he says, “Look how much money I've won. I will buy you new pants and underwear. You are staying.”

And I said, “Okay, I'm going to stay.”

But I'm reluctantly staying. I knew I had to go but I thought, “How much longer could I keep winning?” And I keep rolling and another 10 minutes goes by and I am feeling it. I am feeling it. I'm clenching. I am feeling the pressure, the peer pressure externally and also like the pressure inside my body of, like, “Oh, my God. I'm going to have an accident. I need to get through this game.”

Another 5, 10 minutes goes by and I'm still rolling and winning, and this is brutal. Now, I just want to lose. I am praying to lose. Have you ever been winning in Vegas and said, "Boy, I'd really like to lose right now." That's how I felt. I was struggling. I was, like, sweating. I'm just like, "Oh, please let this end."

I look over to my friend and he's like, "Oh, I'm one number away from the fire bet.”

Dude, there's a fire in my asshole right now, and I'm about to explode.

Another few minutes goes by another and another 10 minutes and I'm just, like, deep breaths, trying to make it through. Finally, finally I rolled the dice and I hit a seven and I lost. And the whole table went, “Oh,” and I went, “Yes! Victory,” because now I can leave and go to the bathroom.

I gathered up my chips as fast as humanly possible and, now, the race to find the bathroom at MGM Grand Casino.

You ever try to look for a bathroom at a big Las Vegas casino? Oh, my God, it is tough. I am running around this casino, people are inebriated, intoxicated. They're just not moving fast and there's slot machines and lights all over the place. I can't find the bathroom and I crap my pants.

Now I got to go to the elevator, awkward elevator ride up to the hotel room. I throw out the underwear. I throw the pants in my luggage and I try not to think about it.

Two days later, I'm back in New York. I'm unpacking my suitcase and I pull out the pants and I hear something. It's the chips from MGM Grand. I never got to cash them.

Thank you.