Played for a Joker

Walking into our dining room is like leaving Barbados and entering into Antarctica. A weird configuration of walls and ceilings causes it to be at least 20 degrees colder than in our family room. Because I am a wuss, I frequently refuse to make the trek through the dining room and into the play room. When it became apparent that Alexis needed some one-on-one time last night, I pondered freezing my face off to go look for a board game, but then I figured I would try to get Mr. Husband to go fetch a game for me. When that mission failed (curses!), I remembered that there was a deck of cards in the drawer, easy accessible from lovely Barbados.

I had never tried to play cards with the kid before, so I figured Go Fish was a good place to start. After wowing her with my mad shuffling skills (seriously, I wish someone went, "Ooooooh!" every time I performed a simple task), I started explaining a watered-down version of the rules. I assumed the game was going to quickly morph into 52 Card Pick-up, but somehow Alexis actually managed to understand the premise.

We made it through about five rounds of perfectly scripted Go Fish. She would ask for a card, I would send her fishing. She would accidentally show me her cards, I would ask for what I needed, and she would hand it over. (P.S. I show no mercy, not even to three-year old kids. Don't show me your cards if you don't want me to cheat, yo.)

Perhaps it was because she initially played the game correctly. Perhaps it was because I'm a control freak. Perhaps it was because I'm a jerk. Regardless, when suddenly the kid stopped playing the game "right," I started to develop a nervous twitch.

"Ask me for a seven," she said.

Twitch. "What if I don't want a seven?" I replied. Twitch.

"Ask. me. for. a. seven." Apparently freedom of choice was voted out in Go Fish World during the elections yesterday.

"Fine," I replied. "Do you have any sevens?" Twitch.

She flippantly tossed the seven at me, simultaneously yelling, "GOOOOO FISH!" Double insult.

Twitch. "OK, your turn to ask me for a card," I said as I grabbed another card.

Alexis looked down at the pond of cards and start flipping them, one at a time. "Look! I found an eight! I have a match!!!!!" (Yes, she really does speak with that many exclamation points. It's very endearing, in a I'd Like To Show You Where to Shove that Extra Punctuation sort of way.)

"And another match!!!!!!"

Twitch.

And so on.

In a matter of minutes, she sat empty-handed while I had more cards than even seems possible in a so-called friendly game of Go Fish.

I thought I was slick doing a little cheating here and there, but in retrospect, I think I totally got played by a 3-year old. Wonder where she learned that whole Play Dumb routine?

Ahem.