Playing Cards and Secrets

Growing up my house had an apartment attached to it. Through a door in my living room you could find yourself in my grandmothers living room. Throughout my childhood she would invite her retired friends (and some not retired, like my old math teacher) over to play cards for an afternoon. This happened nearly every week, might even have been more than once per week for a time as well.

Card playing “infected” all of her children as well. Our holidays saw aunts and uncles descend on our house. These holidays consisted of two activities: eating like we hadn’t eaten before and playing cards after the meal (for HOURS). It is a time that I value in hindsight. When you’re a kid you think that since something has happened every year since you can remember, that it will always be that way. I never really took to playing cards after I grew up and moved out. Grandma passed away and the family ‘get togethers’ became shorter or more difficult to have at all.

I never play cards now, except maybe a few hands of rummy with my wife when we visit a brewery on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. The last time I played with a larger group I was annoyed by a game I’d never played: “Euchre.” Lets just say I had a difficult time learning. I still don’t remember how to play.

Maybe I should play more cards though. It seems like playing cards is a good way to get to know people. After writing about Playing Cards spreading along the silk road, It kind of gave me a nicer perspective of people who lived many years before us. It reminded me that people did used to just ‘hang out’ and actually sometimes DID get to know each other.

The parallel I draw from learning about history is that its kind of like social media posts. We see everyone’s highlights, and it makes some peoples lives seem glamorous in comparison to our own mundane lives. Likewise, history’s ‘highlights’ have a similar myopic tone. Except, with history, its all : war, violence, conquest, culture clashes. We don’t hear too much about how well people sometimes got along with their neighbors.

I really like the idea of merchants along the silk road, old friends almost, who meet up periodically to trade wares and talk about their lives. I picture them in the evening, sitting near a fire, talking about gossip and family while playing a few hands of cards with each other. though I may be speculating, I’m sure it happened at least once.

The Company Secrets

In the episode I touched on Chinese metallurgists being somewhat secretive.