The Euchre Thing
I am very bad at Euchre. I think this is because I don’t really know how to play, I just pretend to know. Jeremy, Pete, and Phil tried to teach me how to play last year, but I was a complete ditz. I think it was because every time they tried to show me, it was really late and I had had more caffeine in 24 hours than a person should have in 24 months.
Or maybe I am just Euchre L.D.
Anyhow, this is how I played: I showed Pete my cards and when we went around the circle choosing the trump suit I asked, "Do I want to pass?" and he would tell me if I wanted to pass or not. Then he’d tell me what cards to play. But I put them on the table. That was an important part of the game.
If we won the hand, I got the credit. Whenever my card blew it for Jeremy, I pointed at Pete and said, "He told me to play that one."
I pretended that I knew what was going on, but I really didn’t. I think what threw me was that we were neglecting half of the deck. What is wrong with the two through eight cards? What did they ever do to us?
I don’t mind not using the jokers, because they have this little smirk on their faces and I always am under the impression that they are laughing at me. I am glad they get stuck back in the box. I hate it when a card gets lost and the joker replaces it. He has that stupid grin snickering like, "Ha, ha, ha, you lost a card you dummy."
But the two of diamonds? That’s a cute little card. It always gets ditched during Euchre though. So do many others. I bet that after the game when they get put back in the box, the face cards, ace, nine, and ten are like, "They like us better than you." I always feel bad for the unused cards. I want to find some card game that uses only the two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight so they can get a chance to play, too. They must feel like such losers.
I do know one thing about Euchre. It’s good to have the jack of trump or the jack of the same color. If I have these cards, I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do.
I am also very bad at guessing what my partner has. There should be little signals like in baseball. But I really am bad at guessing things like that. I predicted that Brad Pitt would win an Academy Award, for goodness sake, and thought Ace Ventura would be worth the two dollars and fifty cents it cost to rent it.
I found a Euchre home page on the internet once. Now those are serious Euchre players. They had all the rules and strategy and house rules on their page as well as Euchre etiquette and the history of the game. If I played with them, they’d probably shoot me.
I bookmarked the site though so I can go back there and learn how to play for real. I tried to get one of those computer games off the site, but it didn’t work.
I can just see myself ending up in a professional Euchre tournament. Everything would be going fine, and my team would be kicking butt until disaster struck:
"Where’s Pete?"
"Bathroom break. Do you want to pick it up or pass?"
"Uh, I’m not sure. Just a sec. Where are the bathrooms? I’ll go find out."
Then we’d go and win and have our picture taken for Wheaties. I’d forget my warm up pants, and some people at summer camp would laugh at me when I went on Leno.