I started taking my son to the track when he was about 10. We handicapped together, but usually I just gave him some action on my plays. As he got older, he handicapped fairly well by himself. This led to capping football, etc. I thought it was great and alot of fun having my son so excited about this stuff. However, the bad news came about the time he turned 19 or 20. Somehow he got a bookie on his own and without me monitoring his plays, he lost a few thousand. My fault entirely, but you know how macho boys that age tend to be. I bailed him out, lectured forever, etc. Unfortunately, I later found out that it happened another time or two. He was able to borrow money from "my friends" to bail himself out. He learned a lesson about chasing at an early age and at considerable cost. I am not proud of how things unfolded in that regard and certainly have to take a share of the blame for introducing him to gambling in the first place. The fact that I did so led to many sleepless nights stressing over what I had done. However, he is almost 32 now and we laugh about this all the time. He has had the same employer since he was 18 and has turned into a reasonably responsible citizen. He does a little gambling now, but not much. We still enjoy going to Vegas often.
