Solitaire and The Dance
REPOSTED WITH SOUND AND FULL TEXT MC .....An improvised response to Debra Engle's A World Of Your Own recent entry GOING FOR THE WIN
MaryMaile’s essay Solitaire and The Dance is an improvised response to Debra Engle's A World Of Your Own recent entry GOING FOR THE WIN (link below)…..
The mysterious game of Pepper mentioned in Debra Engle's recent column in the lovely essay "Going For The Win" reminds me of my first computer. Read more below…
I bought a 486 the day before they went out of style and I realized I should have sprung for a Pentium.
I was the poorest person on the Gold Coast in a studio that overlooked a breathtaking view of the Sears Tower and LaSalle Street canyon....but I was busy assembling my new technology.
I had heard there was a way to play Solitaire on the computer and when you won, the cards would dance. I wanted to see that dance. I was diligent and after construction, I started to play. And play. I played away. But just out of focus was the city's nightfall, a dance of lights all its own. Sparkling and dramatic from my 23rd floor perch, it was usually my best entertainment. But not tonight. I had a goal.
I kept playing, noticing the second city just out of focus. I was not winning. And......was I really playing the computer or was one of those out of focus folks playing me -- for a fool? Casually I started looking behind me, feeling like stereotypical card cheat who should know better than to sit with a door to their back. But instead of the triple locked door, my eyes caught the kitchen junk drawer.
In this studio I could survey all that I owned -- my entire kingdom. And I was pretty sure the deck of cards (yes, an entire deck of cards) which my sister (yes my entire sister) had gifted me for my high school graduation -- and I was pretty sure (ok yes entirely sure) they were still there in the drawer.
I completed the rows but I had no dance. I was also becoming paranoid, as well as realizing I was wasting electricity when I could just whip out the real thing. Finally, I gave up and my friends at work the next day were more than baffled to have to explain I had been building in reverse order or something. I went home and I finally beat myself, electronically, that is, and this time the cards became a sort of video fireworks, cascading with joy, falling all over themselves with an embarrassment of repeating arches, a veritable electronic 52 card pickup. For so long I had wanted to see it. Now I wondered when it would end. But I saw the dance
.
The next day, I also saw UPS. The 486 was reboxed and returned and I went back where I belonged with a stirring game of Tic Tac Toe.
And that, children is how global warming started. Too many of us just couldn't get enough of Solitaire.