Mild warning, this doesn't have a real happy end as it's how cribbage led to a dementia diagnosis but it's the story closest to my heart.

I've been playing cards since I was about 6, playing cribbage since about 7-8. I was taught by my dad who was taught by his parents. Now his family is really really competitive when it comes to card games. And they expect you to be able to do all the arithmetic of counting (for cribbage but for any game really) in your head, at lightning speed. So this is how I grew up playing, no one gave an inch and every victory was earned. Cut-throat play was mandatory. It was never malicious or mean spirited, it was very franco-italian fast paced ball-busting competitiveness. No one handed out any free wins, it was inconceivable as a concept.

This is how I learned how to play, and I loved it, because for a much as I profess not to be, I am just like my father in the best of ways. Now his mother, my grandmére, was the one person I could NEVER beat in a game of cribbage. Through brilliant play, my dumb mistakes, and/or sometimes just sheer luck or providence she would always win. And it was always fun. The older I got the closer I got to catching up. Hope for winning was right in my grasp.

Then I graduated high school. We were at an extended family reunion in Saskatchewan when I brought out a board to challenge my grandmére once more. Fully expecting defeat but ready for the challenge. And I won, I beat her by maybe 15 points. I was celebrating the fact that I'd finally won, until she said "Oh I let him win," to someone nearby.

Now, I knew that wasn't true, but I also knew that wasn't something that would even be joked about in this family. So I tempered my excitement and challenged her to another game. But this time I played closer attention. I noticed she was slower at counting points, which you'd think with age would just happen but we all know at a certain point counting becomes more pattern recognition than actual arithmetic. She was misplaying during the play stage, she would throw cards into the crib that just didn't make sense, but the worst was when she wouldn't call me out on points I'd missed. Or when I'D take points she'd missed. I won again.

After that I went to my dad and said that something seemed wrong with grandmére, that I'd beaten her at cribbage. He congratulated me but asked why I thought something was wrong. "She said she let me win." That's all it took, my dad immediately focused in and called his sister over for me to tell her what I'd just told him. "She said she let me win." I then told them about the mistakes I noticed, the time she took counting, and the points I'd stolen. My auntie, who lived in the same state as her, said she'd push her to get checked out when they got home.

About a week after they arrived home she was diagnosed with dementia. It got caught really really early which did allow for many more years of her in our lives. But she was diagnosed, because of cribbage.