Five shuffles, including the bridge. Twenty cards dealt. Ten to each person. The rest of the deck is piled, one card flipped up to form the discard pile. Then, my dad and I stare into each other’s eyes and the game begins.
Gin rummy is a card game that has been both a stress reliever and a stress inducer for me. Anyone else who plays cards knows the intense feeling of competitiveness that overcomes you when you play with a family member or someone who will truly bring out the rivalry. The game frustrates me because I’ve learned all that I know from my dad. Because of this, when I play against him, I (stupidly) attempt to use his own tricks towards him; I place a plant card so that I can later pick up the pile, I wait to put down sets so that he can’t play off of me, and I pretend to think hard about a decision before making it, even when it is as simple as can be. Using these strategies against him, however, tends to backfire. He reads my moves before I make them, and—while I would never admit it to him—this helps him win the majority of our games. Despite losing (quite often, I might add) and having constant irritation towards him while we play, it is a game that I’ve played throughout my life and which helps take my mind off of everything else that I do.
I don’t tend to get stressed about school. As plain as it is to say, this means that I get fairly stressed about other aspects of my life. For me, playing cards is a way to free my mind of its cloudiness and do something which requires all of my attention. I know not everyone grew up yelling at the kitchen counter as their dad picked up the entire deck of cards in a—way too intense for comfort—game of gin rummy. That being said, I was able to find a little thing in my life that was a stress reliever. These exist for everyone. It can be something as small as meditating for five minutes each morning—I’ve done this too and highly recommend—or re-organizing and cleaning your room for some “productive” procrastination. Finding little things to keep busy and de-stress are truly key, especially in a year when in-person tests are finally coming back and with so much uncertainty (yes, this word again) still in the air. So many it isn’t the sound of shuffling cards which makes you excited, but find that something and hold on tight; it will truly be a life-saver.