Richard Dreyfuss, how do you do it?

Solitaire is a great game. A great, great game. And there’s lot of versions of it. My dad played it a lot and taught me a really hard version which I’m so-so at. My first FAMOUS encounter with it was in the movie Jaws, when Richard Dreyfuss is playing the cascading card style of regular solitaire on a boat. On a boat!! It’s the perfect game for being on a boat when you’ve proved for the twelfth time you can’t tie that knot and you know the next offer to try again is going to get you thrown off (ahem, me and not Richard Dreyfuss. His knot-tying skills were really good in that movie, as I recall.) Oh, and another thing. In the movie the shark DOESN’T EAT Richard Dreyfuss. So there you go about the powers of solitaire.

When it’s a rainy weekend and there’s nothing good on TV and who cares about chores because we’re just going to sleep in the bed again tonight so why make it, and the kids are coming over on Monday and dammit THEY can clean the sink full of dishes for once… it’s nice to crack open the laptop and zip off a quick game of solitaire.

Except it’s never a quick game.

In fact it’s usually at least 8 games, and God forbid you lose 7 and win the 8th, because now you’re into it for at least another 11 games.

I don’t know about you, but my win to loss ratio is low, low, low. Low in-the-toilet low. I think I win 1 in 20 games or something like that. And do you ever notice, after you’ve lost like 5 games or so, the game seems to take pity on you and deals you out three aces, and gives you a great black and red mix so you’re moving cards all over and FEEL like, holy crap! I think I’m gonna win this one! And the paranoid part of your mind starts screaming “Don’t think that! Don’t think that! The game will know and you’ll lose!”

And then BLAM! You’re staring at a red 8 that you could’ve moved to that black 7, but somehow, despite having bionic eyes, you totally missed it. And after you finally move the red 8, the red jack underneath is turned over and you can’t get to the black ten in the card pile any more cuz it’s buried, and every time you go through the deck you think “maybe this time” but forget it because the red 9 that’s sitting on the LAST FACE DOWN CARD THAT’S SITTING ON THE GODDAMN 2 OF CLUBS YOU NEED TO WIN is saying “Dude, we like so gave you all those aces and you STILL lost?!?”

I hate solitaire.

raffle, boating, Bayliner