The Chronicles of Skip-Bo, Volume III

The final in a three-part series examining the mental fortitude required to survive a game of Skip-Bo. To get to Part I, go here. For part II, go here.

As the game muscles its way toward a conclusion, interest is waning across the board. You wonder if and when it ever really waxed, but we have entered a tangible decline stage. The piles sit a little messier and muddled together. Players other than me need pokes and reminders on their turn. Sixes start to look like nines. Every turn requires a full recap of which cards will play.

"You need a 2, 4, 6, or 11," my daughter informs me.

Immediately I go back one generation. Two, four, six, and 11 were the channels we got on TV growing up. "4" (ABC) came in clear pretty much all the time. "2" (CBS) was a little staticky but was clear enough. "11" (NBC) came in OK as long as it wasn't snowing, raining, sleeting, foggy, hazy, hot, humid, partly sunny, mostly sunny, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, or some other "weather event" or weather non-event. "6" (also NBC but from a million miles away) required the rabbit ears to be set to a 34-degree "less than" angle (<) and one family member to dress in tin foil while standing on the roof holding an open umbrella. "13" (PBS) came in as clear as a lark and, if we're being honest, at times it scared the hell out of me, but nobody ever bragged to their friends about getting 13. Nobody under 30 years old understands anything I'm saying right now. But these days I get just enough channels to see Matthew McConaughey douching out in a Lincoln, "dint dewit tuhbee kewl..."

Well-shuffled.

"What do I need again? Two, four..."

I hold a 3, 5, 7 and 9 with a dreary tableau of 12s in front of me. But I draw a card that leads to an avalanche of card-playing. I empty out my hand, my extra crapload of cards down in front of me, and a fair portion of the vital Skip-Bo pile. An epic run like this earlier in the game would have caused anxiety, dread, tears, and a dented mini-basketball hoop. Now my opponents are rooting me on like a marathon runner on Mile 25, go, go GO, you can do it daddy! But I can't close the deal. Alas.

It's anyone's game now but nobody really wants it. All those 1s and 2s that we couldn't find earlier are sprouting up when we need higher numbers. People are asking out loud, "Can we be done playing Skip-Boo?" No. Because if we're learning from this interminable ennui, it's to finish what we start and not quit because we're bored or losing. And we ARE bored. And losing. We press on.

Wait, is that how this game is pronounced? An ancestor of mine pronounced it "Skee-bo" (rhymes with Tebow) and my wife pronounces it "Skip-Boo," a curious pronunciation that actually involves an inside family joke. (When your jokes center on the game of Skip-Bo, it may be time to re-examine?) A cursory internet search reveals what we all thought..."Skip-Bow" is the proper pronunciation. Let's not complicate things.

With that out of the way, a last push brings finally the game home to my daughter, who led wire-to-wire and held off my furious, one-hand avalanche rally and a few advances by my son who remains the unluckiest Skip-Bo player ever. Agony of defeat gives way to sheer relief, and we can all get back to our lives and our laundry after that Easter Vigil game. Whew.

"Now we'll see who comes in second."

Are YOU kidding me. I came as close as ever to cheating but gritted my teeth, Only a few more turns and I finally got my cards out. The boy then, relegated to third place and not usually one for drama but a veteran Sesame Street watcher, does a full-on Bert Faint and cracks his head off a bookcase. Injury has sufficiently augmented insult. My lame attempts at comfort don't work..."if this were the Olympics you'd have taken home Bronze..."

Soon he's back up on his feet; otherwise I'd make him clean up the game. And that's the biggest contest of them all...get out of the room before Dad can get out of the criss-cross-applesauce position that reduces his joints to a fine powder. "Hey, can somebody help me put this away..."

And they're gone. Probably not to do laundry, but they're gone. They'll be back soon to take another crack at Dad and as I stare at the burgeoning laundry pile, I'll be willing to play a thousand more of these games with them. The laundry can wait.

The Chronicles of Skip-Bo, Volume I

Standing in the kitchen drying sippy cups while we wait for a Biblical, rise-from-the dead revival miracle out of our busted dishwasher and I hear some of the best and worst words from a small voice from another room.

"Daddy, wanna play Skip-Bo with us?"

"Well, I have some things I need to do..."

"...I already have it set up."

From the makers of Waterboarding? Too much?

Skip-Bo is a tedious, torturous slogfest of a card game where you try to rid yourself of your pile of cards by playing them in sequential order in the middle along with your opponents. Games typically take 30-45 minutes unless you have my kids and a restless mind. Then they take 16 hours while your mind volleys back and forth between yardwork, paperwork, bills, broken down appliances, projects and other things you need to get done. When will that stuff get done? Who will

"Da-DDDDDYYYYY??!!"

"I'm coming...just, give me..."

"Do you want to play with 30, 20, or..."

"FIFTEEN. Twelve if we can, or ten...I thought you had it set up already?"

Games are more palatable when the piles are 15 cards. More palatable like Kraft Mac & Cheese versus Velveeta. It's still better than folding kids' laundry.

"OK, let's go."

Anal retentive card players get tested when they play with kids. The game has already been set up, and while I totally believe my daughter has not "set the deck" in her favor, I wonder if her small hands and erratic shuffling were enough to sufficiently randomize the cards. In a game where sequences are made, an unshuffled deck could result in too many natural sequences which increases the luck factor and decreases the skill factor. However, if it will make the game go quicker, I'll let it go. But then I see three random cards lying off to the side.

"What are those three cards? No, don't LOOK at them! Just put them on the bottom of the big pile, or in the middle, or put them in different places in the middle..."

Kids take winning and losing seriously. and any kid will tell you that the key to winning is going first. As if the game is the 100-meter dash in the Olympics and someone gets an undeserved head start. Sometimes going first is actually more important than the final result. And yet these kids can't understand the concept of a good, thorough shuffle? Kids, I tells ya...

Luckily my daughter is a born rules follower. and it was written that the youngest player goes first. So every time we play this game our 5-year-old son goes first. We've erased at least 10-15 minutes of infighting, intense negotiations, deal-making, deal-breaking, bribery, and hurt feelings just by following the rules.

The problem though, is in who goes SECOND. If the youngest goes first, it stands to the reason that the second-youngest goes second, right? Unfortunately, we have sat our butts such that our oldest child is to the right of her younger brother.

"Stop. There is no game in civilization where play runs counter-clockwise."

"What's counter-clockwise mean?"

"Like this," (makes a swirling motion)

??

"Instead of like a clock, which goes this way." (swirls in the other direction)

??

"Like a clock. Except backwards..."

Of course every clock they've encountered has been digital. Microwaves, phones, iPads...

"Here. We'll switch places."

We aren't playing counter-clockwise. And in games of four or more, we are not playing in some ridiculous star pattern. Just gives the kids one more thing to fight about when we all lose track of whose turn it is.

All that said, I think we're ready to play. Stay tuned for Volume II...