Playing Your Cards Right

My youngest daughter doesn't suffer fools well. This makes it especially hard for her whenever we all play cards together. Other people might play cards solely for diversion, but with us, it's a real learning process. And it's great for character building.

Only this past year, I finally learned the difference between clubs and spades. I learned this when my family taught me a card game that has taken me ages to acquire: hearts.

If you know anything about cards, you'll know that hearts isn't an especially hard game to learn, but I'm as card challenged as Youngest Daughter is short tempered. Suffice it to say, it's been tough going for all of us.

One of the reasons I never learned to play cards was because my mother's family were an old-fashioned bunch who believed that card playing was right up there with drinking and provocative dressing: a major sin. Once you started playing cards, they seemed to feel, one thing led to another until one day you found you'd gambled away the farm and the kids' lunch money.

Paradoxically, if it weren't for a card game, I wouldn't be here. My father served in the U.S. Navy in WWII and although he wasn't much of a card player himself, one night when he was off-duty, some buddies invited him to a poker game. He begged off, but they wouldn't take no for an answer: they needed another hand. An hour later, as they sat playing cards, the ship was torpedoed. Over half of the men on board died; the side of the ship where my father bunked was blown to smithereens and there were few survivors.

But although I owe my existence to a game of poker, I never learned to play. My mother's mistrust of card-playing and her own utter lack of card-playing skill meant that we kids never really learned to play ourselves. For a long time, I used the excuse that my lack of card know-how was down to my weird family background, but I've come to see that this isn't true. I can't play cards because I just don't have the smarts for it. But I have come to see that cards are a great way to learn about the strengths and foibles of others. And whatever my mother's family might have thought about card-playing, it is an excellent means of character building.

My husband is an accomplished card player. Everybody in his family plays cards and he learned over a dozen games as a little boy at his grandmother's knee. His granny was a feisty old lady who evened out my husband's and my gene pool: she liked to smoke, drink, and gamble. Her method of teaching was to cheat until her pupil was sharp enough to figure out what she was doing. The minute he knew she was cheating, she knew her work was done.

Our Acquired Daughter is a fine card player herself. I marvel at her acumen. She can remember who has run out of diamonds; like my husband, she instantly knows that if someone bid a low spade early on, they probably don't have anything higher. Every time we play, either my husband or Acquired Daughter wins: our two biological daughters are somewhere between my husband and me in skill, but far closer to my husband's end. Every single time we play, I drive one of them half wild.

"Mom, it's your turn," Youngest will prod irritably, and I finally plonk down my card after an agony of deliberation.

"It's spades!" Eldest will shriek. "You can't play a club unless you've run out of spades!"

"Oh, sorry! I thought that was a spade." (I've only just learned the difference, after all.)

"Come on!" the two shriek in unison.

Half the time, I miss clues as subtle as a toilet seat. I unwittingly allow my husband or Acquired Daughter to shoot the moon, thus ruining things for not just me, but my other two daughters.

"Just pay attention!" Eldest will moan, slapping her forehead. Youngest, upon witnessing yet another instance of my card idiocy, will sometimes stomp off after an embittered declaration that no one could possibly be so stupid: I must be doing it on purpose.

But the awful truth is that I'm trying as hard as I possibly can.

"I don't want to play anymore," Youngest hissed through clenched teeth the very last time we played. I'd hung on to my ace of hearts too long, thus allowing her father to shoot the moon and ruining her all-too-rare near-perfect score. "If you can't--" (long, ragged breath out) "--just--" (deep, shuddering breath in) "--remember when to play your high cards!" And off she stomped in a fit of pique.

But nevertheless, I think cards are a great learning tool. Youngest Daughter got through the game with only that one little outburst. I got through her outburst without crying or whacking her.

Like I said, card playing is great for character building.