Just a game?

I don't think so.

Games have rules and winners and losers. So no, it's not just a game.

I enjoy playing games - card games, board games, computer games. And I'll admit I like to win from time to time.

I also like games because they have rules. The box top tells you all you need to know. There's no grey area in game rules. Something comes up - consult the box top.

We've always had a closet full of games . . . Scattergories, Monopoly, Sorry, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, Boggle, Candyland, Pictionary, Life, and my personal favorite, Scrabble.

And we played them all - a lot. We never let our kids win either. Now, don't get me wrong, we played "age appropriate" games so they probably had a better chance of winning than me.

Have you ever played the game Memory?

It looks something like this. Every card has an identical match. Players turn two cards over at a time and try to remember where the match is. And so it goes. The player with the most pairs wins.

The most important part of this game is keeping the cards in order so you can "remember" where they are. This is important. No, it's critical.

In our Flemish I class we played this game with simple Flemish words. The other night, in our Flemish II class, we played it again with more difficult words and conjugations.

There were only 4 of us in the class that night. We sit face to face and our teacher puts all the cards out on the table and asks if we know how to play Memory. Herein lies the first mistake. We all say "yes".

He demonstrates turning 2 cards over that don't match, then turning them back over and moving on to the next player. This is the extent of "game rule explanation".

Bernadette begins and doesn't match either card. As we should, we all see the cards she turned over. Then she puts them back, but not in order like they were. I immediately put them back where they are supposed to be. Then it's my turn.

I turn two cards over and although I don't get a match, I've turned over one that will eventually match one of Bernadette's. Then it's Jim's turn. He sees the potential match and gets it. Now it's Celal's (Chill All) turn.

He turns over two more random cards. He doesn't even let us see them and puts them back in a random spot. My blood pressure is already rising as I say, in English, "what word was that - I didn't see the cards?" Remember, Celal and Bernadette don't speak English so this was a complete waste of breath!

So, despite having no idea what the words were, I quickly try to put Celal's cards back in their rightful spot. Then it's back to Bernadette.

Again it's like she's never seen any of these cards and chooses two totally at random. I see a potential match so I get it on my next turn.

And so it goes with Jim and I racking up all the matches. Bernadette stumbles on a few by chance.

Then about halfway through the game . . . you're not going to believe this, but . . . Bernadette takes her hands and mixes up all the cards. OMG!

Naturally, I can't possibly explain in Flemish that she's totally screwed up the game. Our teacher has left us to ourselves so even he couldn't fix this mess.

And that's where it all went to hell for me. I completely shut down. I mean, I wasn't even capable of starting over in my mind. The cards were no longer where they had been so they might as well have been on the floor as far as I was concerned.

Mercifully Jim was able to recover and he got most of the remaining matches and the game was over.

Our teacher reappeared and my first question was "Are we going to play this again?" because if I was going to sit through another grueling game of Memory, he was fixin' to explain the rules in French or Turkish or whatever, before we turned over one more card.

He responded "Do you want to play again?" I don't even have to tell you what my answer was.

When Jim and I got in the car to go home, I said "What is up with not understanding how to play Memory?" Naturally he thought I was overreacting :)

He concluded that Bernadette and Celal both wanted the chances of winning to be just that - chance. While the object of the game is strategy. By Bernadette mixing up the cards and Celal being okay with that, we all had an equal chance of picking a match.

I guess I understand that logic?

The interesting thing about this is that in our Flemish I class a similar thing happened. Yes, more people who don't know how to play Memory!

I conclude from this that:

1) Memory is strictly an American game and possibly Belgian

2) The rest of the world has never played it and doesn't understand it

and

3) I have played my last game of Memory - in a Flemish class.

My rule-following little brain simply cannot survive another.