Does This Make Me Odd?

I work in a large company downtown. There's lots of fun people here where I work, in particular a group of people I like very much that I often join for break time. I think I've written about this bunch before, but, they're really good peoples.

I don't lunch with them because some of them, during lunch every single day, go down to a room here in this rather large complex and play cards. They don't play poker, but, some very simple little game. They do this everyday. They are card-playing freaks. They love it. They are all very seasoned card players. They are into it.

I ran into one of the girls in the cafe a bit ago and she said "When are you going to come back down during lunch?" (I went down to the Card Room once, upon invitation). Now, they don't ask just anybody to come into their inner sanctum of card playing nirvana. I should be, and am, quite delighted that they think so much of Sista Smiff that they'd want me to join them, but, the truth is.....Cards are just boring to me. The only card playing I've ever done is pretty limited to Slapjack and Old Maid. Oh, and Solitaire on the computer.

I think the tendency to play cards runs in families and my parents neither were card players, in fact, my mother was not allowed to play cards as a kid. When her father was about 12, his mother, who was ill, sent him to the store to get the mail (early 1900's...post office, everything was at the store). While he was there, there were some men playing cards and apparently doing some sort of gambling and my grandfather joined in. I don't know how long he had been gone, but, by the time he got back home,(you know where this is going) his mother had died. He blamed the cards for keeping him from saying goodbye to his mother and it scarred him so, he wouldn't let a deck of cards in his home.

I dated a guy whose family was BIG into Rook and then another guy whose family was big into Canasta.

Mr. Smiff can watch poker endlessly on television. I find it all ridiculously boring.

What am I missing not playing cards?? Apparently, something because so many people are just into it.