500 Rummy

Everybody talks about, and muses over, the cards we’re dealt as related to life. It’s a cliché which often explains the good and bad randomness of experience. God is the dealer who’s flipping fate your way, I guess, so if your hand sucks you get to blame the yahoo with the bolts of lightning in his hair at the head of the table. Sometimes the cards are face up, you get to see the shit before it hits your Honeywell multi bladed Super Pro and sometimes the cards are face down, leaving you in a quandary about what move to make next. Considering what’s already showing, and the demeanor of the other players at the table, do you lift the corner and peek or to do you fold? And are you playing the game that lets you fold? I'm not, the idea of giving up, or giving in, shreds my one-eyed-jacks.

I took stock lately of the deck dealt so far in my life. As each card slid across the table I’d pick it up and sometimes immediately lay it back down. As my game has progressed I’ve discarded quite a few, held some for a while until they just weren’t worth holding anymore and some, like face cards, high numbers and sets, I save, because if the right card comes my way I get to make tons of points.

Looking at the runs and sets fanned out on the table before me, I am giddy with how well the game is going. Each time the dealer slides another card I think, well that’s it, the game is probably over or maybe this is the one that will make me a winner. But what’s funny is that I am already a winner, counting my points, achieved by clever effort and awarded by luck. I’m thinking that dealer, the guy with the lighting bolts as dreads, has an assistant and her name is lady luck. She likes me; she really, really likes me.

What puzzles me, and it’s a personal dilemma for sure is, as close to perfect as the game is I am playing, I focus often on the good cards that were discarded earlier and of no use now, rather than the ones I currently hold.

Why didn’t I save that one and not hold on to it just a little longer? An ace here, a king there, or the queen of hearts I threw back, way in the beginning, and that if I had it now, I could fan out all four on the table and make the other players jealous. And is that what the game is about, making the other players jealous, because if it is, I’m in the wrong game. I want them to win too. So what does that mean?

It means that as I look at all the cards dealt to me during the game, the instant throw-backs, the holds, the saves and the discards, I am the most fortunate player because I know that to win, is not to beat everybody else. The win is actually that the game continues.