Rummy Tears

I had my first completely irrational cry this weekend.

Brandon and I have decided to mostly quit television. I say “mostly” because we still watch our favorite shows, but we no longer flip it on just because. Commercials were making me angry (because come on, they’re STUPID and they go on FOREVER) and there’s thousands of channels of nothing good, so we started taping our shows and fast-forwarding everything else.

It’s been good to get some time back.

When the usual activities get boring, we play cards. But there’s a problem with cards—as with any game. It makes us ultra competitive. And let me just preface this by telling you: Brandon wins. Period. He is good at everything. He has strategies. He picks things up quick. He reads people well. He lives to win.

I’m never as good as he is at anything, but I hate to lose.

So there we were, sitting down to play Rummy. The game we play every time. And if you aren’t familiar with the game, it doesn’t matter. The point is that you play several rounds and each card is worth a certain amount of points. The wild card is worth 300 points, the lower cards are worth 5.

This particular game started with Brandon getting a wild card on his first draw. A WILD CARD. Worth 300 points. Right from the start. Totally unfair. It just happened to be a perfect picture of how the next 3 rounds went.

Carrie: 0. Brandon: 1250.

Carrie: 425. Brandon: 1620.

Carrie 325. Brandon: 2225.

And on the fourth round, my blood was boiling. I had daggers shooting out of my eyes at the man sitting across from me who until that moment had been my sweet husband. I could just feel the happiness radiating from him at leaving my score in the dust, whether or not he let it show. And when I saw that Brandon had 3 wild cards and a couple of aces (worth 100 points each), while I had a grand total of 20 points in my hand, I lost it. I blanked out. I disengaged. I literally imploded. But what pushed me over the edge was the card I discarded because I wasn’t paying attention and essentially gave Brandon the points. I GAVE him points.

He won AGAIN.

I lost.

I started bawling.

Brandon just look at me in surprise with his bright big eyes. What was happening to his wife? “Okay, we’re done,” he said and quickly crumpled up the score sheet.

Rubbing my bright red, puffy eyes, I just collapsed with my head on the table. “I’M NOT CRYING ‘CAUSE I LOST! I SWEAR! IT’S THE HORMONES!  I don’t usually cry like this! Oh gosh. I’m STUPID! It’s just too much emotion right now! HOW DO YOU STAND ME?! BLEH.”

But Brandon didn’t even acknowledge the idiocy of crying over a card game. He didn’t even try to make me feel better about the scores. He just got up and said, “What would you like me to make you for lunch?”

And that was it. Distraction from losing. An appeal to the thing I love most right now: food. (Smart, isn’t he?) Everything just seemed better. And I didn’t even want to punch him in the neck any more for winning everything.

The end.