A shuffle-challenged dip

Whenever our tribe has a little down time, they make some nachos and salsa and pull out a deck of cards. Now that would be fine if it was just ONE deck, but I kid you not, my daughter has 6 decks of cards with which to torture me. My sophistication in cards is limited to staring at the pretty patterns on the back of the cards, but beyond that, and the tasty bean dip, I am stumped.

Both my wife and daughter have limitless memories when it comes to advanced card games. All of their games seem to involve playing with stacks upon stacks of those stupid little waxy cards. These games all involve some type of sorting of multiple threes or twos or some other meaningless number. I was born in a day when Aces were king and only the Jokers were wild. What discriminatory ‘DECK raiser’ decided that today, the RED threes are the bees knees of card ‘deck-dom’, while the black threes are cast- offs?

My other issue with any large quantity of cards is holding them. I literally am the ONLY adult at the table who requires a special card gripping device to fan all those cards without playing 52 pick-up with myself. I can count just fine if I can actually see what’s in my hand. It’s just these fancy ‘Canasta based’ games have too many slick little cards to hold unless you are some kind of a card-shark octopus.

Oh and did I mention shuffling yet? Yes, that is where the real fun begins. You can imagine with 6 decks of cards, a whole card table of deck-hands are required to mix up the stack. So for someone who is first, more interested in stuffing my face with beans n’ salsa , and second, incapable of shuffling well anyway – I’m like Rainman on a first date. The family just gawks in disbelief, obviously aghast at my virtuoso performance. They think they are so superior just because they can chew gum and shuffle at the same time. But I ignore their rudeness because I am nothing if not well mannered. So whenever our gang plays cards in the future, I will continue to lean side to side, silently shuffling, flap-folding, cutting, and fanning - only next time I will just do it with the deck of cards and skip the dip!