Q is for Queen.
Pretty good hand, depending on the game. Not so good in 500 or Euchre, but great for Rummy. Card games were the focus of my family's sociability. I can't actually remember first learning to play, although it was a process to teach me how to hold my cards properly and get good enough to be expected to play. I liked a fast game of Euchre, and got to be a pretty good 500 player. Some evenings, especially when it was just Granny and my parents, and I was the mandatory fourth, I would intentionally throw the game in sheer irritation and obstinacy. Which brought on later retaliation from both. But with a lot of aunts and uncles and cousins around, and not having to play, I enjoyed the games and relished my competence - as well as being treated as an equal.
When my oldest brother married a suburban girl, my parents and brother attended a barbeque at the in-laws house. Lots of people, and a game of cards. So, I wanted to play. What I didn't know was that it was a betting game - like rummy, but with real money. So when I was given the 50¢ ante, I figured at the end of the game, it would be returned, just like the rubber counters and pennies we used at home. When the quarters were lost, and would not be given back, I felt cheated, a victim of theft. Probably a very cheap way to poison my mind against gambling, at the age of seven, a lesson not to be forgotten. I also deeply resented that I was so easily given that money for such a stupid reason, but couldn't just have been given it for my own use, as I saw fit. All seemed terribly wrong.
Solitaire, several versions that I know, kept me calm and occupied through much of my time in the Army. Soothing and meditative. I love the feel of the cards. One of the packs sent To Any Soldier was from a casino, with a neat hole in the middle. Great pack of cards, like it was made of cotton, a pleasure just to shuffle. I can sometimes tell when I'm very stressed, because I will play solitaire almost compulsively.
Seems a shame that my group of friends doesn't play card games like that. Sometimes I miss the almost ceremonial sense of the game, the structure around the randomness, the speed of a fast game with good players spooling out the odds for the fun of it.
6 comments:
I keep studying Chinese, despite making no progress in it, largely because I love making the flashcards, shuffling them, holding them. There's something magical about it: little nuggets of significance, infinitely arrangeable.
I always wished I were better at cards - quicker off the mark. I remember my mother-in-law playing solitaire and patience to steady herself. Interesting that she could still do this even when she began to lose the plot in almost every other respect.
One of those things like eating pickled onions which I wish I liked. Came to believe it was genetic to the women in my family and passed down on the distaff side, neither Granny nor my mum nor any of us like cards.
I quite enjoyed MahJong for a while at college, but never fully understood the scoring. I liked the tiles.
I wonder if card playing is becoming a lost art with the way that people complain of being so busy all of the time.
We play cards at the in-laws on quite a regular basis. With friends we have played intermittently, but at the age our kids are now it is difficult to put the time together.
Dale,
Like a reference book you can order to your own way of thinking.
RtheS
I will probably be like her. I think it does take a certain flavor of mind, those of us who count and sort to feel in control.
Lucy,
I've never wanted to like pickled onions.
I've only played solitaire mahJong, and only as a computer program. I think I'd like the tiles very much.
Phil,
Too little need to simply pass the time, too little real idleness - which the soul needs.
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss-
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss-
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss-
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssnap!
I'm good at card games.
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