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While playing a friendly game of cards last night with family, I discovered an ugly truth: There’s no “team” in Uno. This truism was uttered by my nephew (who has kindly offered to waive any and all copyrights to his turn of phrase) shortly before I placed my final card face up on the “played pile,” much to my husband’s copious dismay. I suppose the sudden and complete lack of magnanimity could have been influenced by the steady flow of Wild Turkey, cranberry juice and 7up enjoyed freely by all, but it got me wondering about other card and board games with the potential to foment discord on a grand scale.
As a night freight pilot, I occasionally had the opportunity to foist a portion of my route off on a newbie Lear driver without sufficient experience to become as jaded as I to the awesomeness that is flying a Learjet and hang out for several hours with other Freight Dogs and some playing cards. We often played Hearts but there never seemed to be a lack of players willing to “take one for the team” to prevent my domination of the hand by collecting all the hearts and the Queen of Spades in order to gift each of the other players 26 points while I unselfishly remained at zero.
It seems to me that Sorry would be another game with a inherent capacity for mayhem, despite the preemptive apology in the game’s title (do I detect a note of sarcasm in that name?), but even my 7-year-old seems to take each game-induced setback in stride. Perhaps the arbitrary nature of the game provides ample opportunity to blame Chance for each loss rather than the premeditated malice of your spouse’s strategy to bring about your simulated downfall. Sorry.
In any case, the animosity dissipated almost as quickly as it appeared after I kicked everyone’s proverbial ass. All hail the Uber-Goddess of Uno!