Rick and I spent the afternoon and evening with Callie, Harold and Kathy yesterday playing cards, eating too much and just having fun laughing the day away. We always have fun there. Sometimes our card game gets a little heated, but we all understand that it's just a card game and what happens in the game has no reflection of how we care about each other and all hard feelings are soon forgotten when the game is over or we stop for a food break.
Rick is an avid cheater and we can always count on him to hide cards away for a later round. Sometimes we catch him and sometimes he's so slick that he gets away with it. Harold pretends to hide cards but he really doesn't cheat much anymore, anyway not like he used to when playing with Rick in the game. Harold now just pretends he is placing cards in his shirt pocket to get Rick's goat.
Rick is a loud boisterous card player and if he draws a good card you know it. He shouts, screams and makes the games very exciting, and if he's not playing our card games are very quiet and subdued. None of us have a chance of winning a game most of the time when Rick is playing. Granted he cheats most of the time, but even when he doesn't cheat he's a very good card player and wins most of the time anyway. I think he just cheats to make the game more exciting to him, and to make the games more challenging. He also doesn't like to lose, and refuses at times to play on if he loses or gets caught with too many cards in his hand when someone else goes out.
Even if Rick cheats or anyone else cheats, I still have fun playing. To me it's not all about winning the game, but just laughing and having fun. I win once in a while and I do enjoy winning, but it's not all that important to me. Granted it's a challenge to win against all of these good card players, so when I do win it's a very rewarding feeling, and I ask Callie our score keeper to put a great big star next to my name.
