Now that I have my Woman Cards, I should start playing bridge again!
When I was growing up, my family had a ton of board games, and a finished room in the basement where we kept them all and played them with our friends or with each other. Chiefly I remember Sorry and Chutes & Ladders when I was really young, and then Monopoly and Clue when I was older. I still like Clue, perhaps even better now after thirty years of practicing law.
But it is the game of bridge that stands out the most in my memories. When I think about things that my parents did together in my childhood — and there weren’t many, because my father was always working — my strongest memory is of bridge games. They would invite another couple over after dinner on a Saturday night and play all evening. They were never partners with each other though, it would always be the two wives against the two husbands. Apparently this prevented marital discord, since my father was a perfectionist in his bridge playing like everything else (he was a Virgo, after all), and would yell at his partner if the rules for bidding or playing were not followed exactly. My mother didn’t want to be the one he was yelling at.
They played at the kitchen table, which was round. I don’t know why they didn’t have a card table. I often used to sit and watch until bedtime, and as a result thought I understood how to play the game. I never actually read the rules though, or had anyone explicitly explain them to me. So when the cool kids at my high school started playing bridge, and were looking for a fourth one day, I volunteered. On the first hand I was dealt I had the king, queen, and jack of a suit, so I figured that was my strongest suit. Unfortunately, those were the only three cards I had in that suit. I didn’t realize that length was more important than strength. So I bid the suit, and my partner took us to game, and when he saw my hand, he said “oh no, sweetheart,” or words to that effect. We lost the hand calamitously, and I was out of the game. After that I learned the rules, and then came back and played pretty regularly through the rest of high school.
Sophomore year of college, my best friend and I were dating two guys who were also best friends. This made it very convenient for us all to hang out together. We spent an inordinate amount of time getting stoned and playing bridge. I actually felt like I was a much better bridge player when I was stoned! That winter and spring, we spent so much time playing bridge, and so little time doing schoolwork, that it is probably the case that if Nixon hadn’t invaded Cambodia, precipitating a student strike for the second year in a row, which resulted in a credit/no credit option whereby you didn’t have to take final exams, we all would have flunked that semester.
(As an aside, over spring break that year, the two guys were hitchhiking from Cambridge to D.C. and stopped to see me and spend the night at my parents’ house in New Jersey. My mother was not very friendly to them, which was unlike her, and it took me years to figure out why. Each of my sisters had gotten married after her sophomore year of college. Here was my sophomore year boyfriend, meeting my parents. She was probably afraid I was going to marry him. Nothing could have been further from the truth!)
Once the strike happened, I broke up with that boyfriend because his idea of how to take advantage of the cancellation of classes was to go up to his house in Maine to party. I wanted to get serious about antiwar activity, which was the whole point of the strike. So we went our separate ways. I also stopped playing bridge.
Many years later, after law school, I joined a bridge group that played once a week rotating among the members’ houses. I liked it, probably more for the food and conversation than the bridge games, although they were always lively. That was fun for a few years, but once I had my first baby, 32 years ago, I no longer had the time or the interest, and in fact never played again. Friends who play now tell me the game is very different from how it used to be, but I haven’t been motivated enough to find out what changes have been made. The game I now play on a regular basis, every Monday afternoon, is Mah Jongg . . . but that’s another story.
Suzy
Suzy, I, too, enjoyed board games; mostly Sorry and Monopoly, when I could get my much older brother to play with me. As I grew older, I enjoyed card games and learned to play bridge the summer between freshman and sophomore year of college. Strange that it came up this week. Patti was one of my two bridesmaids. The other was my other dear friend from high school. She also married her high school sweetheart. I dated that friend’s brother during that summer of 1971 while working as a counselor at the JCC day camp near our home. The four of us hung out and played a lot of bridge (frequently stoned), but the friend’s brother often yelled at me, so her boyfriend (then husband), who was a friendly, gentle soul, became my partner. He passed away last Thursday at the age of 66. Their 44th wedding anniversary is Friday. I told this story, via email (I didn’t make it to St. Louis to the funeral) to my friend just the other day. It is a fond memory, recalled during a distressing time.
Betsy, it makes me unaccountably happy to learn that you played stoned bridge during college too! Sorry to hear about your friend’s husband. His memory truly is a blessing.
Thank you for your kind thoughts about my friend, Suzy. And your “unaccountable” happiness makes me giggle without chemical enhancement! Our fellowship continues.
Immensely enjoyed this story, especially as another “gamer” as a kid. Clue was my passion. (Fun movie, too.) And, by the way, is anyone aware of any Monopoly game, ever, being finished?
Also particularly resonated to the references to stoned bridge, but only as a lurker. I played all my bridge pre-college (and pre-stoned). But I, too, always, wondered if the participants — typically a couple of my roomies and the guy who crashed with us during a semester (and then a year, though it sometimes felt more like a decade) off from Swarthmore — were better or worse players for being stoned. However, so far as I could tell, there never was a basis for comparison — i.e., an un-stoned control group. Sadly, if Trump cuts all that NSF funding, I’ll guess we’ll never know.
John, thanks for your comments, and welcome to Retrospect! We will have to schedule a Clue game sometime. Maybe we can get some other Retrospecters to participate. (Too bad I can’t tag people here, like on Facebook.)
What a collection of great memories—I especially like your first, disastrous bridge game (though I felt sorry for you). I too played bridge quite avidly but, like John S, pre-college and pre-stoned. In fact, I played a lot at music camp at Interlochen. In the Intermediate Division my first year, we had to take a daily mandated rest hour. But we weren’t forced to sleep, so four of us invariably played bridge. I often partnered with a talented pianist, David Oei, who was as competitive at bridge as he was at the annual concerto competition. Alas, I haven’t played since high school.
Love your title, too.
No need to feel sorry for me, John. The guy who was my partner in that game ended up asking me out, so he must not have been too upset.
Thanks for appreciating the title!
I love the way this story uses a game to follow the arc of your life, from childhood ruminations on your parents’ relationship as signified by their choice of bridge partners through your adventurous foray into cool kid-dom, your great description of your mother’s concern over sophomoric behavior with your sophomore boyfriend, how you burnt the bridge bridge with your boyfriend, parted by external differences, i.e., making a choice to party or resist. You continue the strand into motherhood and the shifting of priorities and leave us hanging with the prospect of more life lessons to be shared via Mah Jongg! I can hardly wait!
Such a smoothly woven story braid — bridge, love, and life!