Cribbage - the Forgotten Card Game

I must have thirty cribbage boards. I have two triangles, a circle, a table (yes, with legs and giant pegs), and more than two dozen of the classic rectangle boards - some decorated in colorful swirls, some with logos, some in fancy boxes, and some that are just plain chunks of wood with holes in groups of five. If you've never played, those boards can seem intimidating, but for those in the know, the boards promise a magical time between you and a friend, counting in a way that others don't understand, moving pegs determinedly along the board, trying to "skunk" the other player, and smiling the whole way up and back again.

My grandfather originally taught me how to play cribbage. I don't remember how old I was; I think I must have been seven or eight when the board and the cards first came out. My grampy was the epitome of patience - the perfect grampy in so many ways (and yes, I miss him to this day). I remember learning that 19 is the score you can never get, and having a special jack would let you move your peg one extra hole.

I played cribbage with Grampy every chance I got, and when he wasn't around, I would talk my mom into a game. She helped me learn to count my hand accurately by keeping a secret little note pad down on the chair next to her. After I would count my hand and peg it out, she would jot down the points I missed. Every time she picked up her pen, I would frantically recount my hand, over and over again, and get totally exasperated when I would come up with the same total as I had before. Only later did I find out that sometimes she wrote a "0" on her paper, her way of encouraging me to always double check and double check before moving my peg and declaring my turn over.

I grew up at the seaside, in a little town in Maine. Summers, we would take the ferry boat out to an island in the bay, every day (in fact, one of the islands that Edna St. Vincent MIllay mentions in her poem, Renascence. "All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay."). The ferry boat ride was twenty-five minutes. Mom and Sonny, one of the deckhands, would get out the cribbage board as soon as the boat was out of the slip and play speed cribbage all the way over to the island. They could sometimes get three games packed into twenty five minutes, and I learned that cribbage could be a spectator sport.

Cribbage was my first "adult" card game, that I was patiently taught by adults, and that I primarily played with adults. And I am grateful for that because I learned so much:

• The first rule of cards - never pick up a single solitary one of your cards until the deal is finished and the dealer has picked up his or her cards. It's only polite. Card manners, if you will. Grampy taught me that, and I have never forgotten it. Not only that, I can't violate that rule without hearing Grampy telling me to put my cards back down and just wait.
• Sometimes you just have to bet on the turn - the card that gets flipped up out of the deck that you get to include in your hand. But the sure bet in your hand is better than betting on the luck of the draw.
• Nineteen really is impossible to get. But you can get 29. I never have. Grampy did twice in his whole life.
• When you play a lot of cribbage, it is difficult to stop counting in fifteens.
• When you learn to count in fifteens, you are learning to count. Period. And you're learning about numbers, combinations of numbers, and how to make sense of it all - quickly, and in your head.
• To win at cribbage, you not only depend on yourself and what you have in your hand; so much of your score is dependent on what the opposing player lays down, and what he or she gives you in the crib. It is teamwork while being a game of equals.
• Getting skunked is no fun. Getting skunked means you lost by a bunch of points, and your foremost peg is behind the "skunk" line (and most cribbage boards have them).

You can find a cribbage board for sale at five out of ten garage sales, and sometimes as cheap as a quarter. Buy one, crack open a deck of cards, and teach yourself how to play. Then teach your kids how to play. It is a lifetime legacy of fun, and a tremendous way to teach your kids and yourself much more than a card game.