Whew, early morning. It was a long two weeks at the office, undigging from my vacation three weeks ago. By 4:45 yesterday, I felt pretty good about my breathing prospects, so I broke early for the drinking club.
It was a gorgeous evening. I was able to wear one of my colorful summer shirts with shorts and sit on the deck until after 7:00, at which point it got a little cool. The beer was flowing and the Standards were playing, loud enough to hear them, but not so loud that people had to raise their voices to talk. I call it "perfect pitch."
You ever notice that it's hard to get a group of people to agree on perfect pitch? If you have a couple of groups in a joint, at least one of them will think the music is too loud and one will think it's too soft, pretty much no matter what the volume level is. I suspect it's mostly an aggregation of factors: hearing ability, nearness to the speakers, taste for the music playing, inebriation level, activity involved.
For some reason, card players seem to hate music. That has always surprised me. I grew up in a pinochle-playing family, and the guys always listened to music while they played, often at decibels that climbed as the bottle count did. It seems my family was unique that way. Whenever I'm in a place where people are playing cards, the players always want the music turned down or off.
I've never cared much for cards. I kind of like poker, though I simply don't understand the Texas Hold 'Em craze (if you're playing at a full table of eight and know what you're doing, you'll throw in 89% of your hands; it doesn't get much more boring than that). I learned pinochle, but didn't care for it. I really enjoy gin, and I don't like euchre.
Euchre, I'm told, is an upper-midwest phenomenon. If you live in another part of the country, count yourself blessed. Here in the midwest, euchre is king and occasionally a tyrant.
Diehard euchre players are near fascists in their intolerance: if you ain't playin' euchre, you ain't livin'. I can't tell you how many fine parties have been killed by euchre zealots who try to scare up a euchre game at every possibility because they want to escape the turmoil of thinking of things to say. Conversation, after all, is an art and not always an easy one. The challenge of small talk is part of its joy, but for the mentally halt, an easy game like euchre is far more enjoyable.
That, anyway, is the only rational I can offer for their zealousness. They break out them cards and play euchre every chance they get, and they don't give a rip what the rest of the world (or room) does. They have an extra pack of cards, so what's the problem? You can play, too. Watching a group of euchre players pull up tables at a party is like watching the group take out heroin syringes. At that point, you either shoot up with them or leave because nothing besides the euchre/heroin is going to matter anymore.
Oh well, this post wasn't meant to be a screed against euchre players, so don't take it that way. Pretty much all my friends and in-laws play (the men in my family disdain it because it's so simple compared to pinochle or their real favorite, the highly-challenging game of spitzer). Perhaps that's why I'm so irritated by it. More than one fine buzz and good music has been killed by the game, leaving me with the TV and one or two other hapless eucre-less souls. But all in all, I commend the euchre players: they're getting together to play, and that's better than holing up with their computer all night.
