06/23/03’s illustrious band:

Suddenly Sangria

Brought to you by three adventurous souls who tried to teach me to play bridge.

A little while back, some bridge-loving friends offered to initiate me into the fold. A date was set, a lesson was planned, and a foursome convened on a shady patio one lovely summer evening. We had a fantastic time, and while I don’t know how much I learned about the venerable card game, here’s a sampling of my new knowledge.

• You get 13 cards, which strikes me as an unlucky way to start things off. It turned out to be unlucky for my partner, too, since he was ready to bid and trump and trick and track like a pro, while I had trouble sorting my hand by face value.
  
• Forget what you know about the face values of cards. In bridge, an ace is worth four, a king is three, a queen is two and a jack is one. Except when the word “singleton” is involved, in which case a one can become a two.
  
• Forget the face values anyway. Sometimes, I think during bidding, you have to deal with the suits alphabetically.
  
• If you say “pass” a lot during bidding, you don’t have to think so much and can pay more attention to the munchies. In our case, these included a fresh strudel, veggies and dip, crackers and cheese and a huge Tupperware container of mixed fruit. Plus margaritas, red wine and white wine, which do wonders for the learning process. If you drop the fruit into the wine by accident, suddenly -- sangria!
  
• If my partner takes a trick, I’m supposed to scoop up the cards. But if I’m a dummy (and I have a copy of Bridge for Dummies on my coffee table to prove it) and put all my cards on the table, he plays them for me. At which time I can return my attention to the goodies.
  
• If your bridge coach is a Virgo and his partner is a Leo, they’ll spend enough time debating which star sign has the more controlling personality that you can refill your sangria without missing key points of the game. But when they’re done debating, you’d better be ready to bid on cue.
  
• There’s scoring involved, but the scoring of bridge is so complex that even Miss Leo, a veteran player, did not try to keep up. John the Strudel Man, on the other hand, kept score in his head. I’m glad he was my partner.
  

You know, I think I could get to like bridge. (It reminds me of Fizzbin, a ridiculously complicated card game Captain Kirk made up on Star Trek to confuse the bad guys so he and Mr. Spock could escape.) You get good food, good gossip, good laughs. I still don’t know what trump means, exactly, but if they let me come back, I’m willing to learn.

E-mail the Media Sensation: jugglernaut@hotmail.com

Visit the BND archives at http://jugglernaut.blogspot.com.