Flag on the field: Unsportsmanlike euchre play

Naturally, the best part of a euchre party is the food. "Amy, would you bring your Cowboy Caviar?"

my friend and party hostess, Rachel asked. Offended, I was immediately overwhelmed with profound feelings of rejection. Doesn't Rachel like my chocolate-raspberry pie? Does she think that I am incapable of any culinary skill outside of opening cans? I considered canceling the scheduled Mosiman appearance at this engagement but feared the devastating social ramifications that would inevitably result from the great vacuum caused by my absence. Plus, as I alluded to earlier, there was a LOT of food there. The spectrum of snack selections offered by educators are as varied as their teaching styles. Perfectly shaped cookies generously crammed with an equal distribution of mini chocolate chips. Marinated mushrooms accompanied by tiny blue-tipped toothpicks. Homemade canned pickles. Brownies nestling a peanut butter cup. We heard long dissertations about the scientific methodology of making peach wine, the extolations of purchasing pretentious olive oils (I just recently learned that EVOO wasn't a naughty acronym), and was lectured about the length of the perfect pickling cucumber. "This is good," Rachel's husband Paul politely told me as he sampled my bean dip, "How do you make it?" I explained the complicated process of opening several cans to him. Noticing that her husband was beginning to glaze over with boredom, Rachel decided it was time to start the card tournament.

The trick to any social occasion is establishing that there is at least one person there more obnoxious than yourself. Unfortunately, I hit "obnoxious-level" right at the starting gate. Normally a demure and modest card player with little interest in actually winning, I got caught up in the excitement of game play (and my second cup of pineapple juice with just a sprinkling of coconut rum). My opponent called hearts alone and, seeing that I had the top two cards in my hand, I slammed them down and yelled, "Ha!" The condemning silence was deafening as I realized that I had made an unsportsmanlike social blunder plus we still had to play out the hand so my opponent could get his point.

Fortunately, the adorability factor of our friend Michelle's baby was able to quickly distract everyone's attention away from me as Emma spent her time lifting baby weights and helpfully unpacking the baby bag every time her mother carefully re-packed it. An enthusiastic card player, Ashley coined the evening's popular catch-phrase when she excitedly yelled, "I'm going alone by myself!" Rachel, who had been an eager student of the peach wine-making process, raced around playing "Silent Night" (kind of) on the piano, trying to kick off a karaoke tournament, and exhausted herself adding the long lists of final euchre scores. In the finale, Geri found someone who table talks more than she does and was stunned when her partner first called her up and then reassured her by saying that he was counting on her to take all the tricks. I'm not even going to mention that Kelly won for the second year running. "We are partners for euchre every Tuesday," I hissed at her as she pulled on her winning t-shirt declaring her love of Doritos, "How is it that we never seem to win like this?" With one eyebrow quizzically raised, my friend looked at me for a long moment before laughing, "Ha!"