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semperfionaPinochle was--is still--the main method of bonding in my family. When any group of my relatives gets together, the cards come out. Conversation happens over the card table. Conversation, and good-natured raillery. Everyone's style of play is so well known to everyone else that it itself becomes the subject of banter. And there are many memories that attach to the game.
"We didn't bring you up to be..." Dad started to say.
"A ribbon clerk, I know."
"That was your grandfather's saying."
"Yes...It's been an awfully long time since I've heard him say it, though." Grandpa died in 1980, when I was twelve. I still miss him occasionally. I think he was my favorite grandparent.
I've been playing since I was about eight years old, and it's second nature to me now. I noticed the other night, while playing with my parents, that I was counting trump without ever having thought about it. Even though I no longer play more often than once every six months or once a year, it's like riding the proverbial bicycle. The reactions are almost instinctive.
We're not generous with each other either. Every single point is subject to competition. There's little room for shrugging off of errors, especially when they cost someone else a point or two. I missed some meld during one hand, and noticed it two tricks into the trick-taking.
"Oh rats, I missed my eighty kings."
"Too late." And no amount of protestation was going to get me those points, either. I knew it, but still protested all the same.
I wonder...I think I lost some respect for Ray years ago when he couldn't stand up to the family game. We tried to teach him how to play, and he grasped the rules readily enough, but when one time he was partnered with my dad, and made a mistake for which Dad castigated him, he refused to ever play again. "I maimed a man playing pinochle," he used to say whenever he was invited to join in a game. (And anything Ray "used to say" he said very regularly. Over and over until my ears were ready to fall off from hearing it.)
"We didn't bring you up to be..." Dad started to say.
"A ribbon clerk, I know."
"That was your grandfather's saying."
"Yes...It's been an awfully long time since I've heard him say it, though." Grandpa died in 1980, when I was twelve. I still miss him occasionally. I think he was my favorite grandparent.
I've been playing since I was about eight years old, and it's second nature to me now. I noticed the other night, while playing with my parents, that I was counting trump without ever having thought about it. Even though I no longer play more often than once every six months or once a year, it's like riding the proverbial bicycle. The reactions are almost instinctive.
We're not generous with each other either. Every single point is subject to competition. There's little room for shrugging off of errors, especially when they cost someone else a point or two. I missed some meld during one hand, and noticed it two tricks into the trick-taking.
"Oh rats, I missed my eighty kings."
"Too late." And no amount of protestation was going to get me those points, either. I knew it, but still protested all the same.
I wonder...I think I lost some respect for Ray years ago when he couldn't stand up to the family game. We tried to teach him how to play, and he grasped the rules readily enough, but when one time he was partnered with my dad, and made a mistake for which Dad castigated him, he refused to ever play again. "I maimed a man playing pinochle," he used to say whenever he was invited to join in a game. (And anything Ray "used to say" he said very regularly. Over and over until my ears were ready to fall off from hearing it.)
