A Family Card Game

“Out!” The shout came from my left as Anna sat back in triumph and relaxed a second before gathering up the sixteen stacks of playing cards in the middle of the table.

"Aw, man," my brother grumbled. "I only had one left."

"Oh, hush," I retorted, rolling my eyes at Jason's petulance. "At least you weren't stuck with a king as your second card." For my trouble, Jason showed me his tongue, turned blue from the Kool-Aid he’d drunk with the pizza Dad had made for dinner that night.

"That's enough, you two," Dad said as he counted the five cards remaining from his original stack of thirteen. Already knowing that I was stuck with twelve, I gathered up the other cards from my deck and picked up the pencil sitting on the pad next to me, ready to record and add up everyone's scores.

It had been months since any of us had played Thirteen, but after five rounds, we were all starting to get the hang of it again. The object was to get as many of your cards to the center of the table as possible, building from Ace to King on any stack, provided the cards you were using were the right number and suit. With multiple stacks of each suit possible at any given time, and other players trying to get their own cards out at the same time, Thirteen was more a game of speed than of skill or strategy. So Dad, at a disadvantage to our youthful speed, was usually the straggler in the family card game, since per-round scores could be anywhere from negative twenty-six to positive fifty-two. But even Dad had managed to get into the positive points range two rounds before.

With a yawn, I waited for Anna to finish sorting the cards into their separate decks, uncrossing and recrossing my legs while I tapped the pencil's eraser on the paper. The last five rounds had taken an hour, and it was already nine o’clock. I wanted to go home and get some pajamas on, maybe listen to my iPod or something before I had to go to sleep.

Finally, Anna had sorted the last few cards--two into Jason’s red angel-designed deck, and a third into the Harley Davidson deck Dad had used this hand, the four of us counted our points. I finished counting first, and recorded my score, staring at Dad and Jason's hands as they finished counting.

"All right, Whatcha got?"

"Forty," came from Anna's corner.

"Twenty-eight," Dad said.

"Five," Jason sighed.

After a bit of math, I announced the winner--Anna.

"Yay!"

"Play again?" Dad asked.

"Nah, I wanna go home," I said, standing and stretching my arms over my head as another yawn surprised me. "How ‘bout you, Anna?"

"Sounds good," she said. “I need to do some laundry before I go to work tomorrow anyway.”

Cards back in their boxes, the four of us folded up our chairs and the card table, putting them away before hugging each other good-bye until next time.