Not in the Cards

An old buddy of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, really wanted to play cards. "Come on, Marty, we can play two handed Euchre," he said.

"I don't think so, Cloyce."

"Why not? It'll be fun," he insisted.

I responded, "Not now, man, I got a lot on my mind. I can't deal with cards today."

Would you believe Cloyce hasn't asked me to play since?

Spider solitaire

Somebody asked me once, they really did, how to win at spider. And I told them, you roll up a newspaper and you beat holy hell out of it. Then I realized that they were asking about the solitaire game.

As to that, uh, well, you play cards of the same suit on each other in numerical order, then you play cards of opposing suits on each other in numerical order until you can cross match them into tiers of the same suits and eventually you win.

But beating holy hell out of the cards with a rolled up newspaper works too. It works off the frustration.

What are the odds?

Dad liked to play poker. Well, once years ago when he and his brothers and friends played almost every Saturday night he found himself on a hot streak which lasted several weeks. As most games were played at his house, Pops was teased a lot about marking the cards before the guys arrived for a game. So he decided one day to, I guess you'd say call their bluff.

He bought a brand new deck of cards to use for the next Saturday's game. He left it in the plastic wrapping until time for the first deal, which would be his. Dad was going to make a show of how that game would be fair by opening the cards in front of the guys.

So Saturday night came, everyone sat down, and Pops pulls out the new deck. You can all see for yourselves, fellahs, that this is a new set of playing cards which are obviously untouched, he says, or something similar. He gets a knife and cuts the clear plastic wrap, opens one end of the box, and triumphantly fans out the red-backed poker cards for all to see.

The guys saw the cards all right. Each card was red...except the one blue-backed card (which happened to be an ace of spades) amidst all the others. Sure, Bill, you don't mark deck.

Even Dad got a belly laugh out of that. As poker players might say about such things, 'What are the odds?'