A Practical Joke: Stacking the Deck

There’s so much I want to talk here on the ol’ blog, much of which concerns issues that touch other people’s lives and, therefore, is best discussed on this pseudonymous corner of the web where real names and search engines don’t co-mingle. I will get back to the “Alienation” thread before too long, but I don’t want to overdo it on the dark stuff. While there’s plenty of dark stuff to go around, that’s not the sum total of where I’m at these days.

For example, there’s this thing that happened the other night.

The oldest child who still lives with me (you’ll recall that one has already fled the nest for college) is now a senior in high school. Can you believe that? Child #2 is a freakin’ senior in high school. And get this: we still have a night time routine when it’s time for him to get to bed. Yeah, he’s old enough to where I don’t set any kind of bed time or anything like that; rather, *he* has decided on his own that he wants to get to bed by a certain time in order to be as ready as he can be for the next morning’s early rise for school. He’s an introvert; he doesn’t go out to spend time with his friends, and even the friends he spends time with in the evenings online (playing video games or the like) also typically get to bed a somewhat reasonable hour, so my son is always home on school nights and when it’s time for bed, he still opts to do a nighttime routine with me.

True story!

Our nighttime routine no longer includes reading him a story like when he was younger, but we do play a game of cards and chat for a bit, one-on-one, without his siblings or other distractions to dilute our connection. For reasons that aren’t quite clear to me, these conversations of late take place over a game of Uno. This is NOT the game I would prefer for him — he’s a senior in high school, for crying out loud, and it’s time to master how probability works! (Poker, anybody?) — but this is his game of choice to wind down the evening, so we play a hand or two of this,

If you’re not familiar with Uno, think of it as Crazy 8’s with a couple cards having additional properties (like, say, using 4’s to act as a “skip turn” card). Not really all that challenging, but it can still be fun.

Whenever I win, he accuses me of cheating, and whenever he wins, he brags about his superior skill in a faux-haughty voice. And I do likewise when I win or lose. This is our tradition, and it’s part of our language of comfort and, ironically enough, trust.

However, at one point recently, I was beating him game after game after game, and his insistence that I was cheating started to take on a tone that suggested he might really believe I’m cheating (like I would ever want to cheat my kids at cards. Really, guys.)

The thing is, I do know a little bit about card magic, and the idea that I could use those tricks to change the outcome of the game is not entirely out of the question. And I started to think… what if I *did* stack the deck? How would I do it?

By the way, for those who are not familiar: Stacking a deck involves sorting it into a specific order and then keeping the cards in that order even though you might appear to be cutting or shuffling the deck. That kind of thing. There are all kinds of methods to accomplish this.

So, if I wanted to stack the deck and make it entirely obvious that I was so very much stacking the deck… what order would I do?

Would I want to beat him very slowly? Set it up so that every time it’s his turn, he has to draw all three cards before he gets one he can lay down. I draw a card every so often, but only to prolong the game. End the game with me playing my last card (and thereby winning the game) only after he is holding *every single card from the deck that hasn’t already been played.*

That would be funny.

But,, no, I think it might be funnier to stack the deck such that he has all wild cards (some of which would be “pick up 4” cards) except for one or two banal cards which match the color of the first card to be flipped over.

He’s looking at five wild cards and a good first and last card to play. He thinks that no matter what he plays first, he can’t lose. But, whatever he plays, he never gets control of the game back. Because I deal myself nothing but “Skip Turn” cards of every color, and if he hits me with a “+ 4” as his first card, the top four cards available to be picked up are also “skip turns.” Whether he plays one of the regular cards I dealt him or a wild card (regardless of whether it’s a wild card that forces me to pick up four additional cards) I simply play one skip turn after another until my hand is empty, and he’s left holding his entire “winning hand” less the first card he played.

Heh.

It’s funny to think about. But, I didn’t do it. I’m not going to do it. Our little ritual is a quiet few moments every day where we get to refresh our connection with each other. I like that, and I don’t want that to go away while I can help it. I certainly don’t want to jeopardize it with a practical joke that might call that trust into question. He’ll be flying the nest soon enough, and as will become evident when I return to other topics here, that connection could make all the difference in the world once he flies.

But, still.

It’s kinda funny to think about.