OFF WITH HER HEAD

My sister and I enjoy playing cards. It's has been this way since we were young, and sometimes these card games involved the whole extended family -- our grandmother openly cheating, and our grandfather pretending he didn't understand "shooting the moon" in Hearts while lying through his teeth.

I'll play Cribbage with my sister because once in a great while I might even win. If you don't know the game, the play starts in motion by the flipping of one card after each player has been dealt a hand (and given two cards to the "crib"). In addition to winning the game, a major objective is not to get skunked, or, heaven help us all, double-skunked. It is predominantly a two-person game: one person against the other.

A few months ago, we had identical hands of the same five cards (opposite suits). Anyone who plays Cribbage knows that this is very rare. In all the years we have played, the thousands upon thousands of times we've dealt out cards and discarded into the crib, my sister and I have never, ever had identical hands. 

It's creepy yet kind of cool.

This visit, though, Cribbage is still being weird to us because we keep flipping the exact same card: Queen of Hearts. Doesn't matter which of us is the dealer or the card flipper, that starting card continues to be Queen of Hearts.

I start wondering: What the heck does this mean?

I used to have a fascination with Tarot cards. I still have a couple of decks of them, and I've even gone so far as to study what the Major and Minor Arcana cards mean and how the suits interplay and how the meanings change upon being reversed or next to certain other cards. Something as subtle as a card being flipped from one edge rather than the other makes a shift in the cards' meanings and presentation. As a matter of fact, you can often tell an amateur by the way he or she may lay out and turn the cards, or just by the number of cards they use depending on the "reading" being done.

Of course, my sister and I aren't at a tarot reading; we are engaged in a heated Cribbage match. What is the meaning of the constant appearance of the Queen of Hearts? Could she be tied to something deeper than fifteen points or thirty-one points or a double run of eight?

Here are some of the old-school and newer-school interpretations of our frequent visitor to the game:

• She is a good friend and will help in any situation
• Maternal, home-loving, and fond of animals
• She represents deep emotional intelligence and intuition
• Creative
• She can also be manipulative, self-absorbed, insecure, and not always trustworthy
• However, she is the card for advice and strength to overcome obstacles
• She is one of the most powerful of the Minor Arcana cards

Queen of Hearts sounds a little bit like my sister and like me -- especially while we play Cribbage: Oh, nice hand, well played, good job, fine score ... yah filthy booger ... We feel outwardly sorry when the other gets skunked (but inwardly joyous that the other gets skunked). 

Lewis Carroll depicted Wonderland's Queen of Hearts as blind fury personified, handing out death sentences over the smallest offenses. Put that way, I suppose she is the perfect card for a friendly yet highly competitive game amongst siblings. After all, with whom but your own flesh and blood can you speak out of both sides of your mouth and not pay dearly for it!

That being said, queue up the cards, Dear Heart, and let's play another round. I'm quite certain my sister understands that I might wish her bonne chance, but what I truly mean, according to the cards, anyway, is off with her head (in the kindest, most familial of ways).