Acetate

This weekend I rediscovered something I once knew: Kem cards rock!

One of the great things about playing cards is that the apparatus of card playing affords one a lot of material with which to fiddle. As a compulsive fiddler, this is a big bonus.

I feel I could dedicate a non-trivial amount of time to discovering which set of chips creates the most satisfying clink when riffled together. But there's no question that Kem cards are infinitely more satisfying to shuffle together than their poorer cousins whose edges get all gross after even a moderate amount of fiddling.

Plus, picking up a deck this weekend reminded me that, as a kid, my grandmother had a stockpile of the things in our basement in St. Louis. There must have been at least 20 decks in various florid designs. Plus a variety of card holders, chip sets, mahjongg and rummy-q cases.

Jane (my late grandmother, whose birthday is today) once taught me how to play some of the latter. And from all this evidence, you'd have to conclude that she, like her parents and descendents, was quite the gamer.