Why I Love Certain Dirty, Rotten, Cheating Liars

At the beginning of this year, I began a new tradition of sorts. We call it Sunday Supper. It gives us a chance to get together with my son Michael and his wife Sarah, my daughters when they are home, the Commune and various other friends and loved ones. Basically, we get together here at the house, eat supper, then deal the cards.

For various reasons, we've missed a couple of months. So last week I sent out an email to see who could come over on Friday night. I was in the mood to cook up a storm (grilled marinated pork chops and chicken breasts, grilled asparagus, these fabulous cilantro-filled rolls I found in the current issue of Bon Appetit, finished off with a buttermilk/blackberry cake from the same publication. (I'm thinking about adapting the cake by substituting fresh Texas peaches for the blackberries.)

After supper, we cleared off the table and dealt the cards. By popular demand, the game of the evening was one Michael and Sarah had taught us called Bullsh!t. The entire point of the game seems to be to lie and cheat your way to victory. Seriously. As  you go around the table, each player has to lay down cards in order from ace to king. And you must lay down the correct card(s). That's where the fun comes in. Your fellow players have to decide if you are lying. If someone thinks you are lying, a cry of "BS!" will erupt from him. So, you have to either turn the card(s) over to prove you aren't or take all of the cards in the pot. This leads to a lot of lying and cheating.

In our little group, probably no one gets into the lying and cheating more than my neighbor Andy and my daughter-in-law Sarah. They do so much cheating together that we actually said they couldn't sit together on Friday. Not that we enforced it. It wouldn't be any fun. The two of them clumsily pass cards off to each other, put down more cards than they say they are, and rarely put down the right card. Last Friday was no exception. And no one laughed harder about it than Andy. I've never seen him laugh that hard. Play literally stopped as he crossed his arms on the table, laid down his head and laughed until it hurt. It made my day, my week, my month to see everyone laughing and having so much fun.

And that's why I love dirty, rotten, cheating liars. Or at least, certain people of that persuasion.