The last thing I needed was to raise Hunter's frustration level. He was bored, stuck at home with bronchitis, and we had long since exhausted the possibilities of Go Fish. So what was a mother to do? Risk both our souls and Hunter's burgeoning self-esteem, on the off chance a new game might distract him for a time?

After three housebound days, it seemed worth the gamble.

I dug up an old pack of Bicycles and began with the basics: face values and suits, followed by the hand ranks, from a pair to five of a kind. (We were playing five-card draw with jokers wild -- children being naturally drawn to the notion of a card that can be anything.)

Here at least I got to justify my dubious morals and lack of fitness as a parent with a disquisition on probability theory, and Hunter intuitively grasped that the least likely combinations should be worth the most "points."

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