No Place Like Home

Karen Wight

I think we’ve lost some skills with our computer dependence, video

game thrill-seeking and the lust for instant information gratification. I

think it’s skewed our people skills, especially for the young ones who

can’t relate to life before laptops, faxes, PlayStations and cell phones.

Our attention spans have waned to the point of nonexistence, and our

face-to-face interaction proficiency is plunging.

Take heart, the solutions are simple and are probably lurking in a

dusty corner of the hall closet.

Games. Not the mind-type, but good, old-fashioned board games, card

games, guessing games and word games. Games that increase vocabulary,

help with mathematical skills, work on memorization techniques and

provide a lot of family fun.

You don’t have to have a hidden agenda to play a game, although most

games do provide some intrinsic benefits. Blackjack is a great way to get

your kids to practice their addition. Hangman is great for deductive

reasoning. Scrabble is good for just about everything, and Pictionary can

get the shyest person to crawl out of his or her shell.

My favorite games are the portable kind. The kind you can carry with

you, have hundreds of playing options and can include as many people as

you can find: cards.

When I was a little girl, every summer included a trip to the family

farm in Missouri. I bounced back and forth from my great-grandparents’

farmhouse to the house in town with my grandparents. I was the only

grandchild for quite some time, so we filled our days with cooking,

conversation and cards.

Cards can bridge the gap from young to old and everything in between.

I spent hours playing casino with my great-granddad, Daddy Eph, as we

used to call him. I can still see him sitting in his big chair smoking a

cigar -- spit can by his side -- telling me farm and family stories and

playing endless hours of card games with me.

When I was in town, my grandma would sit at the kitchen table and play

her favorites with me. In between games, she would put something on the

stove or take something out of the oven. She had a lot of patience to sit

through crazy eights and go-fish when I was younger. She had a little

more fun with me as I grew up and could give her a run for her money at

gin, kings’ corners, whist and hearts.

Occasionally, my uncle would be on leave from the Army and he would

join us and make a raucous party out of any and all card games.

Not surprisingly, my mother grew up playing cards and shared the

52-card passion with us. She learned how to play bridge in college, and

50 years later she still loves to play. As a bridge master, she is in hot

demand and has quite the social life built around one-dimensional

royalty.

I find cards a great way to spend time with the kids and their

face-to-face buddy list. Over the years, friends have taught us their own

favorite games that we have added to our repertoire. Some are silly

(Tonka, da hinman, Indian poker) and some require more manual dexterity

that I can muster (spit, speed, war) but all of them are crowd pleasers

and a way to get the conversation flowing.

When the kids were little, they begged me to play cards with them. Now

that they’re older, I’m not so in demand. Occasionally, I get lucky and

they let me do more than serve snacks. I love all of the yelling and

screaming that goes on, and sometimes the kids make noise too.

It’s music to my ears, hands down.

* KAREN WIGHT is a Newport Beach resident. Her column runs Sundays.