Gary Brown: Dealing out lessons in math in the 'old days'
My parents taught their children math by playing a card game with us called "casino."
Don't judge.
Call it a home preschool class in numbers, with primary school in gin rummy and hearts, secondary education in euchre or pinochle, and an advanced degree in bridge.
I recall playing casino when I was 4 or 5. It's one of my earliest and fondest memories, at least among my recollections of the most competitive interactions in our family, those in which we were allowed to defeat and depress a fellow family member without punishment.
Still, the lessons were educational and any victories we achieved while "studying" the numbers dealt to us were satisfying to the extent that they kept us interested in the lessons.
"Five plus two is seven," my brother might build, before my mom said, "and this ace makes it eight," before dad added the two of spades – "Little Casino" it was called, and it scored some points – to "make it 10."
And if I happened to have the 10 of diamonds hiding in my hand – the "Big Casino" – I could capture the entire "build" with one card.
It was mathematics before "new math" took the giggles and the gloating out of it.
"Ha ha!" usually was my final answer when I worked out this intricate addition problem.
We played cards as teams
My mom and I always were teamed against my older brother and my dad in those near-nightly games. The reasoning behind the partnerships, I suppose, was the same as why she always gave my dad the biggest potato and largest cut of meat for dinner. He got the oldest child on his team.
I never took offense at that. Mom was a bookkeeper by career, but a teacher by nature. And she wanted to teach me. Early on, she carefully helped me identify the numbers on my cards in countless "practice" hands in which cards were openly displayed face up.
By the time we got down to "real" play, my identification of the numbers on the cards in hands was pretty flawless.
Occasionally I would err regarding the rules, of course.
"Three and two is five," I would announce, confidently and correctly.
"Now, you've got to have a five in your hand to build that," my mom would note.
"Oh," I might answer. "I don't..."
"He loses his turn!" my brother was likely to shout.
"Let your brother make another play, so he can learn," my mother would correct.
Moving on to other card games
We never thought of them as lessons, though. They were just fun games being played with the family.
Then mom taught us rummy and hearts, while dad instructed us how to play cribbage. And an uncle contributed to those classes, calling cribbage "mumbly peg."
"Want to play some mumbly peg?" he might ask one of us when he came for a visit.
We learned pinochle by sitting on chair arms watching dad and his three brothers play the game in the parlor of my grandparents' farmhouse during Sunday afternoon gatherings.
I can recall my dad flicking the corner of one of his cards as he decided which card to play next. I can remember my Uncle Walt glancing up at him as if to ask, "What's taking so long?" I still can see my Uncle Mike smiling because he knew my dad was merely distracting his other siblings. And I can hear my Uncle Dewitt's knuckles slap against the top of the wooden card table as he emphatically ended the trick by taking it with a trump card.
Ultimately, I ended up living by words instead of numbers. My brother used his mathematical knowledge more directly, as a civil engineer.
Nevertheless, my early education in cards apparently served me well as I continued through life, weaving my words into stories. You're reading some of them.
Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.
This article originally appeared on The Alliance Review: Gary Brown: Dealing out lessons in math in the 'old days'
