Spoons!

First, let me wish you all a safe and happy St Patrick’s Day. There’s no Irish in my blood, I am 100% bull-headed Kraut. I believe Germans are reportedly competitive as well, which is where this story comes from.

When I was a kid, we played a lot of card games. Cribbage with Dad and sometimes with Mom or Aunt Min and Uncle Fritz. Kings in the Corner and Crazy Eight. Rummy. A couple varieties of solitaire, whether we were alone or someone was watching over our shoulder.

However the card game which stole the show, hands down (pun intended), was Spoons.

Here’s a link explaining how it’s played. I don’t remember eliminating people from the game; that just wouldn’t be any fun. Coz the more the merrier.

I think I broke my finger once fighting over a spoon. Ok, maybe it was just jammed. But I know I have a scar on my arm from playing spoons at lunch at school one day. A spoon flew under the table and I naturally dove under it to retrieve the spoon before anyone else and in my haste ran my arm along the jagged edge of the underside of a chair.

Which reminds me, my initial memories of the game are playing around the kitchen table with Mom, Dad, Pat and a friend or two. But we also played it during lunch hour at school. I carried this little deck of cards with me for those occasions. It took extra skill to play the fast-paced game with such small cards.

But it was the games at home with the family which formed legends. Scratches and claw marks on our hands and fingers as we fought over that one remaining spoon. The time someone in their excitement over grabbing a spoon flew to their feet, hitting the kitchen light and cracking it.

Mom loved to tell of the time my friend Kathy, who was quiet and reserved, was playing the game with us on a camping trip. When she finally got four of a kind, she uncharacteristically jumped up with that spoon in her hand, excited about her victory.

Good times. Put those phones down, kids, and play a real game.