It is really enjoyable to watch when one of your clients self-initiates a game. Today, one of our members brought in a deck of cards and was asking his friends to play Go Fish with him. He is a real charmer, although his form of dementia makes it a struggle for him to determine things that are appropriate. So, in the middle of a group activity, he pulls out his cards and loudly asks his friend to play with him. And, he doesn’t take “no” for an answer, he just deals you a hand of seven cards and waits for you to join!
The other members didn’t really want to sidebar themselves from the group, so I decided to jump in so he would have someone to play with. As we started, I realized I didn’t know what rules he was using for the game, so I asked him to explain it to me. Here’s what he said:
“Well, its a real good game, you’re gonna like it,” his southern drawl was soft but always genuine. “You get seven cards each, and you ask the other player for a card, and if he doesn’t have it you draw from the pile. When you get rid of all your cards you are the winner.” He gave me seven cards and then put the rest in a stack, so you could only draw from the top.
“Got any eights?” he said.
“No, sorry,” I replied. “Got any two’s?”
“Yep,” he handed me a two, “you can also call them deuces.”
“Alrighty! Deuces it is!” I went to lay down my pair of two’s.
“Oh, you need to wait until you get three of a kind to put them down,” he told me kindly. “Got any eights?” he said again.
“No, sorry, go fish. Do you have any Kings?”
“Sure do,” and he handed me two Kings, so I laid all three of them down.”
“Have you got any eights?” he asked, once again.
“No, I haven’t got any eights.”
The game went on for a few minutes, and partway through the game he picked up a King from the pile and played it on his side. This gave me a great sigh of relief . If you could only play three-of-a-kind, and you could only go out if your hand was empty, I was worried you might get stuck holding an extra card and the game would never end! However, his version of Go Fish foresaw this predicament. I guess it was a kind of Go Fish/Rummy hybrid.
It wasn’t too long before the game was over, and he looked at me with a big smile and said, “You won! Congratulations!” I was impressed with the game, it was straight-forward yet dignified (because each player is allowed to make their own choices about what card to call), could be played with only two players, and would last no longer than 10 or 15 minutes at most. To me, this makes it a very ideal one-to-one game that I will keep in my back pocket for those clients with short attention spans, but need some social interaction.
