• Day 8 Entrep Community

  The App That Gave Me a Second Shot at Dad

  Posted by nayrichar nayrichar on June 10, 2026 at 4:14 PM

  I’ve been a bad son. Not intentionally. I’ve just been busy. Work, travel, my own life—somehow twenty years slipped by, and I went from being a kid who called his dad every day to a grown man who remembered birthdays two days late. My dad never complained. That’s the worst part. He just kept sending me articles about birds—he loves birds—and signing his texts “Love, Dad.” Like nothing had changed.

  Something had changed, though. Last fall, my mom called and said, “Your father’s not himself.” He’d been forgetting things. Appointments. Names. Where he put his keys. Normal aging, the doctor said. But normal aging doesn’t make you forget how to use the microwave. Normal aging doesn’t make you cry because you can’t remember your granddaughter’s face.

  I flew home for Thanksgiving. First time in three years. My dad looked smaller than I remembered. Thinner. Quieter. He sat in his recliner, watching a nature documentary about eagles, not saying much. I sat next to him. “Hey, Dad,” I said.

  He looked at me. For a second, he didn’t seem to know who I was. Then he smiled. “My boy,” he said. “You came.”

  That broke something in me. Something I didn’t know was broken.

  I stayed an extra week. Took him to appointments. Made him meals. Watched a lot of bird documentaries. One night, he was restless—couldn’t sleep, kept wandering around the house. I sat with him in the living room at 2 AM. We ran out of things to talk about. I pulled out my phone, looking for something to fill the silence.

  That’s when I remembered the vavada app. A buddy at work had mentioned it months ago. Said it was good for killing time. Simple games. Low stakes. I’d downloaded it but never opened it. That night, I did.

  The app loaded fast. Clean interface. No creepy pop-ups. I showed my dad the screen. “Want to try something?” I asked.

  He squinted at the phone. “What is it?”

  “A game,” I said. “You pick a number, spin a wheel. Easy.”

  I set up a guest account. No real money—just demo mode. Fake coins. No risk. I handed him the phone. “Press that button,” I said, pointing at the spin icon.

  He pressed it. The wheel spun. Landed on red. A little animation played. Coins appeared. He smiled. “I won.”

  “You won,” I said.

  He spun again. Landed on black. Won again. Another smile. A real one. The kind that reached his eyes. We sat there for an hour, spinning the demo roulette wheel. He didn’t understand the rules. Didn’t care about the odds. He just liked watching the wheel spin and the little coins pile up. It made him happy. It made me happy to watch him be happy.

  The next night, I downloaded the vavada app on his tablet. Set up a real account with a small deposit—twenty dollars. Just enough to make it feel real. I showed him how to play. Low stakes. Simple bets. Red or black. Odd or even.

  He loved it.

  Not because of the money. Because of the routine. Every night after dinner, we’d sit on the couch, open the app, and play a few rounds of roulette. He’d bet on red every time. “It’s a good color,” he said. Sometimes he won. Sometimes he lost. He didn’t care. He just liked the ritual. The clicking. The spinning. The sound of my voice next to him, saying “good bet, Dad” or “almost had it.”

  I went back home after the holidays. But I kept calling. Every night, 7 PM. “Ready to play?” I’d ask. He’d say, “Got the app open.” We’d play for twenty minutes. Me on my phone, him on his tablet, a thousand miles apart. I’d watch his bets through the app’s shared feature. Red. Always red.

  He won more than he lost that first month. Not a lot—maybe fifty dollars total. But he talked about it like it was a fortune. Told my mom. Told his friends at the senior center. “My son and I,” he’d say, “we’re gamblers now.”

  I didn’t correct him. We weren’t gamblers. We were a son and a father who’d found a way to connect when everything else felt hard.

  One night in February, he didn’t answer the phone. I panicked. Called my mom. “He’s fine,” she said. “He’s just tired. He played the game for an hour by himself today. Wore himself out.”

  He played without me. That was the first time. I should have been sad. Instead, I was proud. He was using the app on his own. Remembering the rules. Making bets. Feeling capable.

  The vavada app didn’t cure his memory problems. Nothing will. But it gave him something to look forward to. A little spark. A reason to pick up his tablet. A way to feel like he was still sharp, still in the game.

  Last week, he called me. Not my mom. Him. He figured out how to dial my number. “I won twenty dollars,” he said. “Red. I bet on red.”

  “That’s great, Dad.”

  “You coming home for Easter?”

  I hadn’t planned on it. Flights were expensive. Work was busy. But I heard his voice—the hope in it—and I said, “Yeah, Dad. I’ll be there.”

  “Bring your phone,” he said. “We’ll play.”

  I laughed. “I will.”

  I’ve been a bad son. I know that. But I’m trying to be better. And sometimes, being better means finding small things. Small rituals. Small ways to say I’m here without saying the words.

  The vavada app is still on my phone. Still on his tablet. We play every night at 7 PM. He bets on red. I bet on black. We lose more than we win. Doesn’t matter. What matters is the call. The connection. The twenty minutes a day when the distance disappears and we’re just two guys, spinning a wheel, laughing at nothing.

  I don’t know how much time I have left with him. Neither does he. But I know this: when he’s gone, I won’t remember the losses. I’ll remember the wins. The nights he beat me by a dollar and bragged about it. The time he hit a bonus round on a slot called “Golden Eagle” and screamed so loud my mom ran into the room.

  I’ll remember the app that gave me a second shot. Not at being a son—that’s a lifetime job. But at being present. At showing up. At sitting on the couch, even from a thousand miles away, and saying I’m here, Dad. Let’s play.

  That’s a win. The biggest one. And no wagering requirement could ever take it away.

  nayrichar nayrichar replied 5 days, 2 hours ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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