Blues, Cards, and Margaritas

In early 1920’s Paris, Ernest Hemingway and other creative types all gathered at Gertrude Stein’s Salon to celebrate life, to exchange ideas, and to be inspired. Among the numerous ways I don’t match Hemingway, two of the important ones in that scenario are that I’ve never been to Paris or to a Salon, but I can certainly hold my own party in my hometown. And though I don’t have many writer friends, I do have an eclectic group of friends who supply plenty of inspiration, not to mention good times.

As I work on my next book, I search through my daily life for inspiration, so I decided to celebrate everything that is going right at the moment with a little blues music and card games (Learning how to play a Card game was on my list this year since I have to admit that I haven’t played cards since I was about twelve.) And what’s better than blues music playing in the background as you discuss and laugh at each other’s attempt to play cards?

The first card game of the night was pass or stick. Since we didn’t start playing until well into the party and margaritas and wine had been flowing for a while, the easiness of this simple game was necessary. The analogy to explain the game was "Pass and Stick is like life, you don't have to be first, you just can't be last." We all found this to be true, but maybe that was the wine speaking. I actually ended up winning that game, but not much skill was involved so I won’t be bragging about the win.

We decided to attempt Blackjack when pass and stick wore out its thrill. Apparently, counting to 21 is difficult. We had a table full of educators but none of us were the math people. Lara said at the beginning of the game that you can’t expect English teachers to do math.

That may be true, but we certainly tried. Billy suggested Trivial Pursuit instead. So after figuring out that we would be the ones losing all our money at the card tables in the casino, we decided to try our luck at trivia, a game that made us feel as if our IQs were double digits lower than they actually were. Not to mention the game was the 1984 edition. (We’ll just say that‘s the reason we couldn’t answer any of the questions.) Thankfully, we ended that misery and moved onto Catch Phrase.

Since Catch Phrase came after several empty bottles of wine and margaritas, the music changed to 80s upbeat music, and the room filled with shouts and cheers, and my dining room table took a beating, literally. It was girls against guys, and I’m just going to give Danielle credit for being an awesome team member.

The night ended with Tom strumming Pink Floyd on my guitar as a few sang along. Everyone left reluctantly, and only because it was nearly three in the morning. The one request was that we start earlier next time.

The conversation was lively and ranged from traveling to Hemingway to personal experiences. Dare I say it, but it was an inspiring evening to propel me through the time I sit in front of a computer typing up line after line that I will only delete later.  I think Hemingway would have been a happy guest, even if it wasn’t 1920s Paris.