Restaurant Game

Call it a game and people relax. Restaurant Game is a game in the way chess is a game — playful outside, serious inside.

The lesson of the game is that your move is never just your move. It changes what others will do next, which changes what your move was worth. Thinking one round deeper is the entire advantage.

Every January, the gym fills; by March, the regulars have the place to themselves again. The calendar changed nothing. The people who stayed simply stopped asking the calendar for permission.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. The name is new; the wisdom stood at bus stops long before either of us.