Because I am now a member of the ACBL, I receive their monthly bridge magazine in the mail. In the October edition of The Bridge Bulletin, there was a very nice article written by Gloria about Lester Trapp, who during the last year of his life had played the game blind, "but could see the cards better than anyone in our club." The article mentioned that he had died on June 24. Elsewhere in the very same edition, Annabel Finnick and Lester Trapp were mentioned as the winners of the National Pairs Championship. It mentioned that Lester Trapp had reached the rank of Grand Life Master, but there was no accompanying article or photo. Still, you would have thought that some editor would have caught the fact that Lester Trapp had won the event after he had died.
We saw Lucy, Carl, Arnold, and Deborah the next morning at the sandwich shop. (Where else?) We told them the truth. They had already figured out that we had entered the tournament as Annabel Finnick and Lester Trapp. I called what we'd done "channeling," which seemed more credible than saying I heard my dead uncle speak to me.
They really had no choice but to believe us. It was either that, or they had to believe that two people who had been playing bridge for less than three months had outplayed all the best players in the world. The impossible is more believable than the highly improbable.
Consider the monkey and the typewriter. Imagine you walk into a room and actually see a monkey typing the Gettysburg Address, including all the punctuation and correct capitalization. Would you believe it was random luck, or would a different, totally impossible explanation be more acceptable to you?
Maybe that's what religion is all about. Is life just a highly improbable coincidence, or does an impossible explanation make more sense?
I've gotten way off track here. Like Trapp once said, I'm philosophically bent, and more so now than ever before.
Arnold, Deborah, Lucy, and Carl walked with us to wait for the shuttle bus. There were lots of hugs and a few tears when we left.
My parents grounded me for three months, but it only lasted about three weeks. They needed me to drive Leslie places, and then Leslie wanted to play at the bridge studio with me, and it would have been unfair to punish her for what I did. Pretty soon the whole grounding thing was pretty much forgotten.
The first time Leslie and I played at the bridge studio, we finished third and earned half a masterpoint. Leslie has gotten her school to start a bridge club, using a bridge teacher who's being paid by Trapp's school bridge fund. Only five kids showed up for the first meeting, but Leslie thinks they'll have at least seven next week. Counting the teacher, that's enough for two tables. The ACBL holds a youth national tournament every summer for people under eighteen, and Leslie hopes to put together a team.
I haven't heard from my favorite uncle since the nationals, but I think about him a lot. After Annabel's cruel death, his heart turned cold and hard, like a brick, but whatever kindness he did show was genuine. Just a simple "Nicely played" from Lester Trapp meant a lot more than a ton of praise coming from someone else. Each one of our conversations, whether about God or earwax, has a special place in my memory.
My dad still doesn't have a job. Our backyard is still a disaster area.
Cliff and I are still friends, but we don't spend much time together. It's awkward, because of Toni and me.
I cannot tell you the extent of my relationship with Toni. That is unauthorized information.
I'm working on my college applications, and I've gotten a job three days a week after school at a bookstore, the same bookstore where I dropped Toni off for her rendezvous with Cliff.
I've made a resolution that I will no longer let Cliff or anyone else manipulate me. Life will deal me many different hands, some good, some bad (maybe they've already been dealt), but from here on in, I'll be turning my own cards.