Generational Corruption

A strange thing has happened since we got back from our camping trip…I can’t get my girls to stop playing cards. Seriously. I get them started on their school work, leave the room for a moment to do something vastly important like laundry or interneting, and suddenly, I hear the distinct sound of the shuffling of a deck of cards. The minute they are done with the current assignment the cards come out. They used to read; now they play cards.

They have started playing Oh Heck! which is really just a fancy (or hillbilly) name for spades. I am starting to get a little worried. These girls are good. They’re regular little card sharks! And just as an aside and because I’m a word nerd…did you know that ‘cardsharp’ is actually an official term for someone who regularly cheats at cards, and ‘Card Sharks’ was a game show back in the late 70’s? Both, however have become acceptable, popular culture terms for someone who is proficient at playing cards. There you go…a little semantic history for your day.

Now back to my cardsharp daughters. I wonder if I should I be worried. I mean a few generations back they would have been excommunicated from the church. A few more generations back they might have been burned at the stake and go back even further and they might have been banned from the realm. Cards have not always been an acceptable pastime for young ladies. And yet as I type this I can hear the distinct sound of cards being shuffled. My Eve is good at shuffling. She can even do that bridge thing at the end. She learned it from me. I learned it from my grandma. My grandma and I used to play gin rummy for hours when I was Eve’s age.

It’s taken generations to achieve this level of corruption.