Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned from Playing Cards

Well, here it is--the first entry in my new blog, which isn’t about cancer, except for when that whole subject just inevitably creeps into my psyche. I’ll still be writing at katydidcancer, but lately I’ve realized I need a new venue. Maybe that means that I’ve begun to believe that katyDIDcancer, as in the past tense. But mostly, it’s because sometimes I think of things that I’m dying to write about, but I fear that no one will want to read anything “normal” that I have to say. Or, I don’t write what I’m really thinking because it seems almost sacrilegious, because I am supposed to be living in my post-cancer sunbeam thanking my pink nail polish for the right to live another day. I might think to myself, oh that shit is hilarious, but…damn, I can’t put that in the CANCER blog.

What's a girl to do? Well first, she needs to remember that it is other people that make this whole trip worthwhile--the people you love, the people you've lost, and even those you've never met. Including that person who googled the phrase "live chicken on six," somehow got sent to a blog about breast cancer, and actually read the post. That person was able to make a girl happy in a way that is hard to describe, because it is too random, too meaningless. Too perfect.

So here I am, admitting that, as Gloria Steinem once said, “Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.” And, as my wise grandmother once said, “I like the clouds.”

That was worth saying, and worth writing down.

So is this.

I have spent over thirty years of my life playing cards. Around the same time that my grandfather decided to teach me to dance like Fred and Ginger, he taught me to play gin. I was probably five or six years old. Soon my brother, or maybe my parents, taught me poker. Later I learned to play hearts, and spit, and spite and malice, and so many other games. I spent countless hours playing solitaire in my tiny room, at the dining room table on rainy days, during my lunch breaks. I played cards on dates and in huge unruly groups as a teenager. I wished there were people my age who knew how to play bridge so that I could learn. Sometimes, I would dream in cards, hearts and diamonds floating around in my subconscious, not as metaphors, not at all. These days, I am teaching my six and a half year old daughter how to play cards, just as adults taught me all those years ago.

And it’s just about the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

People say, I learned everything I ever needed to know (fill in the blank), but it’s rarely true. This time, though…I wonder. As I gain the perspective of someone teaching someone else this skill, I think about how hard it is to tell even our closest people the things that are actually important, but how it is possible, instead, to show them.

I taught my daughter to play several different kinds of solitaire. A few weeks ago, when we were on vacation, I saw her playing, but I couldn’t figure out her configuration. I asked her what kind she was playing and she said she made up her own rules because it was too hard to win the ways I had taught her. I told her that defeated the purpose. But mom, I haven’t won once. How is it fun if you never win? Well, I said, if you lose, you get to put them all back together and shuffle and play again. What more do you want?

And I realized yeah…there it is. So what else have I learned from playing cards? Well, a lot of things, and not just “know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em,” though honestly, that shit is true. I’ve learned that:

If you have just two dollars in your pocket, you should never be bored.

Even the six of spades is important enough to warrant tearing up the whole house in search of it.

Trash-talking is the same as love, only more honest.

Worn-in is better.

You cannot play ten-card gin with a child. Their hands are simply too small. Play with seven cards instead.

War is a monotonous and pointless game.

It’s important to pay attention to people’s faces, and to the things they like to keep.

You should always have friends you don’t need to talk to at all.

Sometimes you have to pick up the entire pile, even if that makes your loss inevitable. It will be worth it while it lasts.

Dad can win the game, but he will always lose the contest.

Large, raucous groups are a lot of fun, but one other person is enough.

Someday, you will move far away from your family’s home. You will meet a complete stranger who will share your living quarters. You will look hostilely at one another and you will declare that you need to make some house rules. She will consider this and say, fine. Do you play rummy? And almost 20 years later you will still love her.

Some men are kings, some are jacks, and some are jokers. Women are more likely to be judged by their wardrobes.

The best part of being the dealer is deciding what’s wild.

It’s worth learning how to shuffle using the riffling bridge, no matter how many times the cards fly out of your hands before you get it right.

It’s good to have a lucky number, especially if you never tell anyone what it is.

Some people will always think "booze" when they hear the number 21, and others will always think “blackjack.”

You will meet a lot of men in your life. This fact might include a 20 year old you knew for a hot minute when you were 17. He flirted with your mom, couldn’t be taken seriously, and you never missed him after the month you spent together. But amongst all the flowers, jewelry, mixtapes and everything else you’ve received over the last quarter century from various love interests, you made sure to keep the box he carved for you to store your playing cards. Because, after all, I mean, DAMN. He whittled for you. Correction—he whittled you a box for your playing cards.

It’s possible to get lost in time, thinking about patterns and colors and numbers, and that’s fine.

Plastic chips are as much fun as money, and everyone can play.

And finally, this:

Daughter, you are a very smart girl, perhaps smarter than the lot of us. You will do many impressive things in your life. But I will never be prouder of you than I was when you were six years old, at the moment when, after seven games that you had resignedly lost, you slapped your little hand down and said “BAM! GIN! You should have known I was holding those sixes.”

I could only shake my head, because you were right—you had beaten me.

Fair and square.