It's In the Cards ...

Recently, a group of friends of mine decided to get together to play poker. One of the guys had never played before, but we reassured him that we would be able to teach him quickly. What surprised me was that he (approximately 50 years old) had never handled a deck of cards before. He didn't know what the face cards meant, etc. It turns out that he was raised in a very religious household, and cards were forbidden. We took turns shuffling the deck for him when it was his turn to deal, as he did not know how to do this. A few weeks later, I was at a family get-together, and part of the group decided to get a poker game going. The group included four kids ranging from age 11 to 15. Interestingly, the kids did not know how to shuffle the cards either! In this case, the kids explained that they had only played cards on computers, and had not actually played cards the old-fashioned way. For me, the simple (or not so simple) act of shuffling cards becomes a window into the way lifestyles change over time in ways that seem imperceptible.