Advent Calendar: Dominoes

Advent Calendar:

Dec 20
DOMINOES

I spent Sunday playing dominoes with my brother and brother-in-law. Dominoes aren't just for Christmas. They are for any spare time and it's a game we play from our earliest days. It is our national past time. "That's a capicu," he tells me, teaching me one more thing about our culture along the way. I just put a special finesse on him, he explains. A capicu is, at least where I'm concerned, a lucky accident, a lagniappe, a "win-win". When you "capicu" you get an extra hundred points. It's a coup de grace, the ultimate indignity you can put on your opponent, playing your tiles so synchronously that at the end your last tile can be played on either end. Capicu! I do not play the game well. Hell, at family functions they pass me along as a burden. "I can't play with him, he's stupid," they'll say. All in fun, of course, but nonetheless true. These guys play dominoes like it's some sort of high-level chess or bridge and I'm usually just bumbling around while they chortle at making me play so-and-so tile. Yeah, we play dominoes year round, but, at Christmastime when all the folks are home there are domino marathons involving every element of the family. It's a round robin where everyone gets to play, relax, and spend real quality time with each other. And that, my friends, is a real capicu.

Here's a great domino page