For the Fun of It - frantic frenzy

my favorite card game.

Hi! Welcome back, everyone. This newsletter has become such a staple of my routine. Even as my desire to post on Instagram or X or anything wanes, I feel safe on this little corner of the internet, for now. I've noticed that a lot of my friends are also on the journey to try to disconnect from the churning machine of social media. It's felt hard, obviously, because social media tends to be how we get work nowadays, at least for me. But I'm trying to limit how I interact with it, and how I want to put my work out in the world. How about you?

This week I wanted to talk card games. I mentioned that growing up, I spent summers on Pender Island. I'm old enough that we didn't have internet there until well into my 20s. Imagine!!!! Ha.

We would play card games on the ferry- particularly a game called Big Two, and sometimes Gin Rummy. Cards were enmeshed in childhood for me- you didn't need a complicated board game or a lot of cards (do people even play with the Pokemon cards they collect?), you just need a deck.

where 2s are the best card

It's been ages so I had to look up some of the games I remember playing.

• obviously War is a big one, I was actually such a big fan I remember making my own deck of cards to add in with a normal deck (I think I used chocolate and candy illustrations in place of suits).

• There was double solitaire (or Double Klondike).

• Go fish.

My favorite games though, were always the ones where you could add your own spin on it.

I remember watching a dad and daughter play this game once on the ferry, a sort of variation of Slapjack. Almost every card that appeared had some sort of rule. You slapped on the jacks, you clapped your hands for the Kings. It was very elaborate. I think maybe the daughter made up all the rules to beat the dad, but he did a pretty good job at remembering it all.

Frantic Frenzy

That brings me to my all-time favorite card game- Frantic Frenzy.

My friend Carrie came by for the weekend. We were friends, but remember how I said me and my friend Helen looked alike? Carrie and I were opposites. To use Lord of the Rings metaphors- Carrie was like an elf, and I was a dwarf. But we both loved books and making stuff up and we got along really well.

We'd run out of other games to play, and we both really wanted to play spoons. It's a game where your goal is to get four of a kind, and then once you do, you grab a spoon and put it on your nose. Each person has to do it, and you lose if you're the last person (because there won't be any spoons). Here's the problem though. It's really hard to play spoons with two people.

So obviously we just made up a new rule.
We sat across from each other, and after you drew from the deck, you would discard by literally throwing the card across the room towards the couch. Cards were FLYING. And of course, once the deck was exhausted, and if you didn't have four of a kind, you had to go hunt in the scattered cards. That was the frenzy part.

It was chaotic, and I could not tell you who won, but we were finding cards even 4 years later.

Did you have any card games you liked as a kid? I also liked Slamwich, and Stone Soup, though you needed special decks for those.

I feel like I should mention that I'm still using and enjoying my freewrite!

I think they've just released a new version with a backlight. They're still so expensive for what they are, but if you like typing without too many distractions, it's really been great. I still write all my novels longhand, so the freewrite for me is a substack machine. I'm thinking of trying my next novel out on it, though.
ok love u bye