A little healthy competition. What’s your game of choice? My wife Johanna and I are on a little bit of a dominoes kick right now. I’ve gone through golf phases, and darts, and cribbage, and I used to play a lot of Skip Bo with my grandparents when I was a kid. Don’t try to play Scrabble with me, though, because I’ll refuse.

My wonderful in-laws have been bridge players since they were in college. I only ever had the vaguest of notions of what bridge even was until a couple years ago when I asked them what the game is all about. For some reason I got intrigued, to the point where I actually read books about bridge. This was completely perplexing to Johanna, and to me, but it was a fun thing to do exactly because it was so outside the normal ways I use my brain; it was fun to try to work through the deep logic exercises in bridge strategy. Unfortunately, Johanna has yet to catch the bridge bug. And since bridge is generally a game that ideally involves a partner and another couple, I haven’t made it too far down the bridge road.

But we did take a beginning bridge class. The in-laws gave me a gift certificate for classes at the Twin Cities Bridge Center, which we took with friends a year ago. At the end of each class, my head swimming with points and suits and bids, I would peek in to the main room on our way out to the car. Every night the room was packed, and I was always struck by the size of this community that I was just starting to get a small glimpse of.

Last week I finally went back to learn some more. Here are some images from my first trip, with more to come.

Bridge Humor

A sampling of the finer points of bridge strategy. You follow?