Knowing the rules

I don't like it when I don't know the rules. This morning I went downtown to check out the newly opened SugarHouse casino that is going to save Philadelphia from economic Armageddon. It dawned on me the minute I walked in that I didn't know how to behave in a gambling establishment. I felt like I had a sign on my forehead that said so, and I kept expecting someone to tap me on the shoulder and escort me out.

Is it rude to watch someone else gamble? Just in case, I tried to be inconspicuous. In Rain Man a crowd rubbernecked Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman's table, but I think that's because they were beating the house. At one point I mindlessly meandered toward the back of a blackjack game, and the dealer and another somber-looking gentleman in a suit swiftly censured me and said I was to stay on the other side of the table.

Then there was last Friday night when I went to the Mill Creek Tavern, a watering hole of University of Pennsylvania students, to listen to the band of the son of a friend of mine from Detroit. Again it hit me as I crossed the threshold that I don't know pub etiquette. First of all, I blundered in an hour and a half early; there was just me and my friend, the bartender and a bored-looking waitress sitting at the bar, donning a collar but almost nothing south of it. I wasn't sure if I was allowed to sit at the bar to have only a sandwich. I didn't know what to wear, I didn't know about cover charges or tipping or clapping.

Three decades ago when I first went to a Korean house in Philadelphia, I noticed shoes lined up at the door, and that the folks inside were in stocking feet. I had about five seconds to decide whether I should remove my shoes. It involved guessing about the philosophy behind the shoe rule: Was the removal of footwear reserved for intimates, or was it for more prosaic sanitary reasons. I put my bet on the "intimates only" interpretation, and was wrong.

I don't like it when I don't know the rules. I really enjoy about my God and Savior that He is not capricious, like Zeus or Poseidon. He gives me the three "R's" I want: Relationship, Reason to live, and Rules to live by. He doesn't say, "Salvation was by faith yesterday, but today I want something else." He doesn't say, "Love God with all you heart, and your neighbor as yourself" has been abrogated. It's the same today, last Tuesday, and next Friday.

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