Bobo's Big Career Choice

Our cat, Arlo,* apparently has no wish to become an attorney. At left is a picture of what he did to a book on the subject.

Contrast this with another volume that he consistently and tenderly paws down, unharmed, from the lowest bookshelf, a volume we often find earnestly beckoning up at us from the bedroom floor:
"The Conversation Begins: Mothers and Daughters Talk About Living Feminism."

Delighted as we are that our cat refuses to conform to gender stereotypes, we are nevertheless hoping he'll soon be able to support both himself and us in whatever career he eventually chooses. After all, he's been freeloading off of us for almost seven years now.

Maybe he wants me to start marketing portfolios of cat-clawed books to local galleries. Surely if elephants can go around trumpeting themselves as "artists" for producing this stuff, then our cat's provocative "clawrifications" of selected books lying around our house constitute brainy, postmodern aesthetic and textual comments.

Or at least comments on the clutter lying around our house.
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*a.k.a. Bobo, Lolo, Hobo, The Littlest Hobo, Harmo, Larlo,
Motion Boy, Crazykins, Dardo, Munkin Mops, Parple-bo, Moan-mo, Bo-bot, Go-bot, Ho-bot, Crying Eyes, Dinky-Do, Home-Bo, He Who Refuses to Touch His Specially-Bought Scratching Post, or Doodles.

"pass the buck"

According to the standard etymological model, the term "pass the buck" originated at the 19th century poker table. To ensure that every player had an opportunity to deal, a buckhorn-handled knife, the "buck," was placed in front of the dealer and then passed on to the next player after each hand. (In a related matter, the slang word for dollar, "buck," scion of the sawbuck/buckskin line of development, may have converged with the expression "pass the buck" over the years as the unsubtle knife was gradually replaced with the more civilized silver dollar.)

But how did "pass the buck" come to mean "evade responsibility," then?

I am perhaps the only person left in this country who has failed to have taken up poker as an avocation, nor am I inclined to watch celebrities holding their Texas 'ems. Nevertheless, from what little I do know, equitably passing along the opportunity to deal the cards is A Rule Of Poker; it's exactly what you're supposed to do. And the breach of this rule could hardly have been welcomed among pistol-totin' poker players, at least not in the imagination of those of us raised on the volatile pistol-totin' wit of Yosemite Sam.

More likely, failure to pass the buck would have been viewed as a bizarre and aggressive act: a scheme, perhaps, to count cards or to deal from the bottom of the deck, or (to round out the cowboy stereotype) an invitation to your short-fused fellow players to shoot you for being a selfish, buck-hoarding jerk.

So, do poker players ever evade the "responsibility" of dealing the cards? If so, is such evasion viewed as willfully shirking a duty? Or as just being mildly lazy?

To me, the standard explanation of this phrase's origin really doesn't make any sense. But it's not my job to figure these things out; in a delicious irony, I'll leave the hard work to someone else. Your turn to deal, varmint.