Ralph's Blog

Thank you for all your well wishes on my 70^th birthday on May 7^th. Thinking back, there really is not a lot of difference between 65 and 70 because I was retired for both birthdays. The difference comes with how the body performs. For example, returning to my feet after sitting on the ground takes planning, where at 65 you could generally get up off the ground or floor without thinking.

May 7, 2025 coincided with a regional bridge tournament at the Radisson Hotel in Middleton. I decided I would play bridge on my birthday. I thought it would be a lot of fun playing against When I was growing up, bridge was unheard of in Fox Lake. The card games were sheepshead and euchre. I decided to take up bridge before the Covid-19 epidemic.

Bridge is a partnership game where you sit across from your partner and the opposition sits on the other side. The players are designated as North, South, East and West. North and South are partners and East and West are partners. Bridge uses all of the cards in a standard playing card deck. Each of the four players are dealt 13 cards, look at their hand, and try to provide information on their hand, legally, to their partner by bidding on the contents in their hand. If you personally win the bid, called an auction, then you play the hand against the opposition. Your partner sets down his or her hand, now called a dummy, and then you tell the partner which card to play after the opposition player plays his or her card. Your objective is to make your bid. For example, a three club bid means you need to take nine tricks (6 base level tricks and 3 other tricks).

Little did I know people live and breathe bridge before taking up the game. One person at our bridge club has played for over 60 years. It does not necessarily take that long to get good at bridge but new players like me are like raw meat to more experienced players. Over the few years I have played I have had to take a new approach to finishing last, which occurs frequently. The approach is people remember who finishes first and those that finish last. Because we never finish first, why not be last?

On May 7^th, me and three other guys played in a Swiss Team. (The term Swiss Team comes from a guy playing chess in Switzerland. He devised a way so that winner teams play winner teams and loser teams play loser teams. His discovery transferred to bridge and because he was Swiss his scoring method became Swiss Teams.) The idea is that the North and South people play other team’s East and West people. Similarly, the East and West people play other team’s North and South people. After you play the round, the scores are compared. The team achieving the best composite score over the board, gets the points.

Me and the other three members of my team, paid our money and prepared to play 5 rounds of 9 boards of bridge – three in the morning starting at 10 a.m. and 2 in the afternoon starting at 3:30 p.m. We barely won one round. The other 8 rounds we were not even close. In our prior experience in Swiss Teams the lowest composite score we achieved for one round was minus 39. On May 7th, according to a teammate, we beat our record with a composite score of minus 63. I don't think that record will be eclipsed by anyone in a long time. All in all not a good day in bridge and for the day, our Swiss Team anchored the bottom of five other Swiss Teams.

We had a break between the morning and afternoon sessions for lunch. Our Swiss Team drove to a neighborhood bar for lunch. We arrived at about 1 p.m. and so there were few people at the bar. Our food came quickly.

After we ate, the waitress came and gave each of us our bill. I reached for my wallet, opened it looking for my trusty debit card, and it was not there. I looked again. It was not there. I then looked all over the wallet. All of my other credit cards were present but not the debit card. It was not there. I must have lost the debit card, but where? I had this empty feeling and then panic. Fortunately, I had enough cash to pay the bill.

Our team drove back to complete the afternoon session of bridge. My mind was not focused on bridge. Rather, my brain was trying to figure out what happened to the debit card. I called home and left Jean a message about the debit card. I think the message was a tiny bit hysterical.

While I was playing rounds of unfocused bridge, Jean was trying to determine the location of the missing debit card. She was able to look at the problem logically and thought perhaps it was still at the eating place we were the night before. She called and they did have the debit card. She then drove, picked up the debit card, and left me a message on my cell phone.

I did not see the message and did not find out about the returned credit card until after I returned home at 6 p.m. It was a long afternoon of card play and debit card worry.

After I returned home, feeling not so good about my Swiss Team result and the loss of the credit card, I needed something positive. Even when Jean handed me my “lost” debit card I was still downhearted. I went to Facebook and so all of the birthday well wishes. Those well wishes made up for all of the disasters encountered on May 7, 2025.

Thanks to everyone who rescued my 70^th birthday. I am thinking I will avoid playing bridge on my 71^st birthday next year. I need my heart to keep beating to make it to my 72^nd birthday.