you are viewing archives from 2004

old maid

I was on my way to a meeting with Older SlackBrother J. a few days ago. He was most pleased to be granted a reprieve from his guests - his sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and their three children, ages one to seven.

Apparently, Hell isn't other people, but other people's children.

It's not that the children were poorly behaved. It wasn’t that they were dangling from the rooftops or lighting their cat on fire. It was simply the fact they were children. And three children under the age of seven in that close quarters can be a bit trying for the most patient folk.

Auntie SlackMistress is trying to ward off such future visits by laying the groundwork early.

Children can be crate trained, right? A peanut-butter-filled kong should keep them occupied for an hour or two while I run errands?

So what did you do, I asked, inquiring minds and all that. J. ticked off the activities: the beach. Disneyland. DVDs. Swimming. Old Maid.

Old Maid? I asked.

Yeah, the card game. Old Maid.

I didn't know they still made Old Maid.

I poked around the Internet. They still make Old Maid!

For those just tuning in, Old Maid is a card game. You play by dealing out all of the cards to the players. Each player then discards all of their pairs face down. Next, they offer their hand to the player to the left who then takes one card from their hand and then lays down any pairs that they may have. This then repeats, and the game goes ‘round and ‘round until one person is ultimately stuck with the Old Maid.

The only card without a match.

I remember Old Maid from when I was a kid. I didn't have my own set of cards, as my parents preferred to play games that required adding and subtracting - like Progressive Rummy, which was usually played on Saturday nights around the kitchen table, my mother's cigarettes creating sheets of smoke as we sipped greedily from our Bailey's Irish Cream and felt like adults. And there was the occasional bout of poker.

But Old Maid? Old Maid was a game played at friends' houses, in-between Chutes and Ladders, Connect Four, and Candyland. It was a rainy day game when you were bored beyond bored and you weren't old enough to realize that doing nothing can be quite divine.

I didn't get Old Maid. I wasn’t sure quite what an Old Maid was, and I certainly didn't know anyone who looked like her. The only unmarried woman I knew was my father's secretary Maureen. Maureen did impossibly hip things like go to Great America and ride the roller coasters with us and let me play with the typewriter at my dad's office. If that was an Old Maid, well, then I wanted to sign up.

That was 1978. It's now 2004, and Old Maid, well, she's still here, and still old and alone.

I asked J. Why don't they show them the truth? Why don't they show them Old couple? Those smug matched pairs with their massive debt from putting two kids through college? With their kid’s adolescent angst and teenaged drinking? Why don't they show them with their minivans and PTA meetings? And lack of closet space for your fifty pairs of shoes?

Older SlackBrother J. raised an eyebrow. It’s a card game.

Oh. Good point.

Besides, he added, it’s supposed to take you away from Real Life, not slap you in the face with it.

Agreed.

So let 'em have their Old Maid.

But I still think Impossibly Hip Aunt with a Metric Assload of Shoes sounds better