I come from a family of card players.
I think I've always known how to play Solitaire and Double
Solitaire and the usual games of Old Maid and Fish and Crazy Eights. Our family used to have some heated Rummy
games and rounds of Everlasting (like War only with card suits) and the ill-fated
rounds of Hearts where my grandfather would always shoot the moon and then
pretend he didn't know how to play.
As a teenager I learned the more aggressive team card games
like Knock-Out Whist, Multi-Player Spit, and the best card game of all time, an
old Irish transplant called Forty-Fives.
Today my sister is visiting.
We break out the cards for a casual game of Rummy, which we both play
fairly evenly and don't bother keeping score. Next up is Gin Rummy. I win the first game then promptly lose
everything after that.
Then I bring out the Big Guns -- Cribbage.
My sister is really good at Cribbage (one of my sisters-in-law
is even better). I, on the other hand,
can barely remember the rules. While
pulling the wooden pegs out of the bottom panel of the board, Sis quickly
reminds me of how to play. In the first
dummy hand that we play, she totally wrecks me and leaves me somewhere back
near the gate while she takes off around the first corner of the board.
"That's just for practice," she says, "an
open hand."
I think it should count.
After all, I never win at Cribbage, so it's okay with me if she already
holds a commanding lead. I mean, I am
the one who pulled out the board. I knew
what I was getting into when I started this debacle. I lose the battle, though, and she replaces
the pegs at the start line.
Her coaching pays off as my pegs leap-frog their way up and
around the board. Eventually and
inexplicably I reach the end line first many hands later. If my sister had counted the first hand like I
wanted her to, she would have kicked my royal ass.
I am dying to teach her how to play Forty-Fives,
though. I think she'd be damned good at
it, and I think we'd make a strong team for partner games. But there's no way I'd play cut-throat with
her at the table. She knows me too well.
That's how she trounced me at Gin Rummy earlier. I swear she knows what I'm holding in my hand
and what move I will make even before I do.
Creepy. And kind of
cool. Definitely loads of fun.
It's too bad she lives two states away from me. I'm feeling a rematch coming on. You know, just for practice. A dummy hand or two with all bets off. Unless, of course, I'm winning, in which case
all bets are on.
