Learning from cribbage

Grandma and dad used to have daily crib games. The games were epic with pulsating voices coming from the kitchen when someone had a great hand. "Hot digitity", "Oh boy", "Sonofabitch", "Yee-haw" were a few I remember. There were others I'm sure.

I learned the game of crib from them. I watched them, counted the cards, looked for the patterns, and learned what to throw away and what cards to keep.

Dad took me under his wing and taught me all of the rules of crib over a few weeks. He regularly beat me as he showed what I could've played versus what I had played. He got all the good cards. I knew he liked to cheat, so I was sure he was dealing the cards crooked. But he got the right cards when I dealt too.

He shared a secret about crib that I never witnessed in those games with Gramma. No one ever talked about this secret. I don't know if Gramma knew the secret skill my dad had. He showed me how to do it making me promise not to share it with anyone else.

Before Grandma died, I danced a few rounds of crib with her. She never beat me. She used to curse like a sailor when I vanquished her.

She could beat my dad, but she never triumphed over me.

Thinking back, it started when I was a youngin' of 6 years old. Gramma would flip the cards upside down and we would play Memory. Looking for matching cards, the winner would be declared with he who had matched more pairs.  My brain was young, uninhibited, free of pain, drugs, alcohol and stress. I never knew Gramma Grace to drink. But her downfall was a chain-smoking addiction to menthol cigarettes.

That was the only advantage I needed as a child.

As an adolescent, I didn't have that same competitive advantage as alcohol exposed me to a new world of enlightenment.

I was 14 when I started playing crib. To beat Gramma required a new competitive advantage. I had to cheat. Dad passed down his secret in my trust. And it worked. Gramma stopped playing crib as she got sicker and later bed ridden.

My dad's secret is not much of a secret anymore. A book and a movie came out 8 years ago exposing it.

Dad applied the Laws of Attraction to his cribbage game. He taught the rules of visualization to me.

Never once did I think this skill was transferrable to other areas of my life until I saw the "Secret" movie.

Gramma used to say I had a horseshoe up my ass. Luck had nothing to do with it. I wanted that card, visualized it, asked for it and was always giddy in thanks when it turned up.

We can cheat the game of life the same way dad and I cheated at crib. It's quite easy.