Playing To Your Weak Suit

For those who are not aware of it, I am fond of card games. Growing up in a family where card playing was traditional, I became familiar with rummy, canasta, poker, spades, blackjack, and hands and feet (the card game my family was most fond of playing) from my youth. I am not a very good gambler, as might be imagined, largely because I am horrible at deception, but I am good at card games that require a certain intensity of thought and strategic skill. Among my more intriguing card-playing moments is the fact that I was playing contract bridge with some fellow brethren of mine at the Home Office of the church I attend during the infamous Super Bowl halftime show with Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson [1], completely missing one of the iconic scenes of recent television because of my love of card games and the company of friends.

There are some games where suit plays a major role. This is true of spades, hearts, and contract bridge, for example, where the possession of particular suits can play a major role in the way one plays the game and one’s success. In contract bridge, one’s confidence in bidding (along with one’s partner, who has hopefully communicated through his or her own bids) leads one to choose a strong suit that serves as the trump, along with a commitment to win a certain number of tricks. If one has a lot of hearts and no spades in one’s hand, for example, bidding spades would be an immensely foolish decision. We can see the suits and we can make wise decisions accordingly; it’s not that complicated.

In life, it is a more difficult matter. In life I continually find myself playing in very weak suits, as my life tests me in areas where I am not very skilled far more often than it seeks to gratify my ego by being in areas where I do well. Today, for example, I can think of at least three situations today where I was playing to weak suits in ways that were revealing and somewhat interrelated. Given the fact that I tend to find a great deal of humor about my own fallibility (perhaps too much humor), I hope that others will find at least some humor in my awkwardness and embarrassment, considering none of it was too harmful.

The first situation, and potentially the most serious, given that it has a lot of very complicated matters, relates to my attempts to investigate and allay the concerns of a friend about an ongoing matter, and figure out the transmission of information from one person to another. This is not playing to a strong suit, both because of the delicacy of what I was trying to figure out, as well as the fact that it was necessary for me to reveal a great deal of rather unpleasant information about myself to someone I am quite fond of and who might not be very happy to hear what I had to say. I can’t say I was very happy about what I had to say either, but I am an honest man, and I wanted to convey the reasons for my concern about the well-being of my friend and others in a similar situation. I hope all works out, but that sort of matter is definitely a weak suit of mine because of my own life experience and the context of the situation.

The second situation dealt with an assignment I had at work with a couple of coworkers to set up space for an agent scoreboard for another department. When I was in kindergarten, I got “report cards” with smiley faces (or not-smiling faces in areas where I did not do so well). Although I was a moderately accomplished kindergartener, there were a few areas that I struggled in that have been lifelong struggles of mine. One of those was handwriting, and the other was drawing between the lines. I have never been a skilled artist, despite much practice in drafting and mechanical drawing, neither of which I am particularly good at despite my professional interests, and staying within certain boundaries has also always been a very difficult matter despite my recognition of the severity of the matter. The task was made more difficult by not having a lot of supplies to work with, but it ended up at least serviceable, which is as much as could reasonably be expected, I suppose.

The third situation was more comical, and one that has actually been the subject of some substantial conversation. As I was heading off from work, I spoke to a coworker who shares a taste with me for spectacularly bad novels [2], and he suggested that I should watch cartoons like “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic,” as the cartoons remind him of a time before he liked girls. For a variety of reasons, I just do not think that would be a very wise television decision, not least because the time in my life has long passed, if indeed it ever existed, when it would have been appropriate for me to watch such a television show. Additionally, a return to my childhood would not be something I would view as a positive matter, even if I have found videos about the physics of “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” to be highly entertaining [3] largely because of the ironic contrast between physics and children’s entertainment.

While today’s experiences with playing to my weak suit were certainly not as serious as it could have been, it is a reminder in many ways that one never seems to leave the issues that develop from youth. Very early on in life, I had some pretty clear strengths and also some pretty clear weaknesses and shortcomings. Most of my life has been a further elaboration and development of those concerns, with greater capabilities but generally not a reversal of those things that were not good from the beginning. Let us hope that in the future any other future experiences are similarly humorous, and not serious and rather difficult situations. I know I could use a lot more laughter in life.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/08/11/why-arent-they-in-the-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-janet-jackson/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/the-best-worst-novel-of-all-time/

[3] http://youtu.be/muVfidujxRg