Playing Cards with Grandmother

I can tell you that my (often annoying) competitive nature comes from playing sports, or from having a sister close to my age, or just a charming part of my overall OCD ways.  But I would be lying/wrong.  I truly believe that the true art of competition started with playing card games with Grandmother Woodruff.  

Most of the grandchildren on the Woodruff side have their own stories of their first card games which often involve Grandmother baby-ing us through the rules in the first one or two games until we got the hang of it.  But that is where she stops being nice and starts getting real (anyone catch which TV show that's from?!?).

There we were, five or six years-old, thinking this might be a friendly activity with our precious and nurturing Grandmother.  Wow, were we wrong!  And we all had to find out the hard way...

Grandmother was not about to lie down without a fight and she was surely not going to "let us win" no matter how much she loved us.  This is how she got her nickname (Thelma) and where we get many life lessons such as:

1) A card laid is a card played

2) No table talk.....I'm not sure how this translates to a life lesson, but it's absolutely necessary to remember in our games!

2) Think before you play/plan ahead

3) Be aware of the things happening around you

4) If you commit to something, you have to see it through until the end, and for goodness sake:

5) Pay attention and stay in the game!

But one thing I didn't learn when playing cards was, "It's not whether you win or lose," it's how much fun you have playing the game....nope.  I don't feel that at all!  I HATE losing.  And this really becomes annoying to Joey, because unfortunately I have married someone who beats me (fair and square) in almost everything we play....it's just AWFUL I tell you.

One of the things that Joey and I have talked about regarding Merve is that we want him to know the rules and strategies that you learn by playing games the correct way.  We don't want to teach him that if you miss a shot in pool, you get more until you hit one in.  I don't want him to think that he should win no matter what and especially not that the good things in life will be handed to him.  So Grandmother will have to retract her Thelma-claws when he gets ready to learn how to play cards, but I'm going to let her teach him the same way she taught all of us!