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Last week, I mentioned that I was able to attend our family reunion up in Ohio. It was dubbed the Carlos E. Muncy family reunion, and it involved the families of my mom, Beverly, and her sister/my aunt, Chris, getting together. Unfortunately, we were unable to have family members from my deceased uncles Ed or Al, as their families live in Florida. That’s a long trip up I-75 from down there, so we understand why they were unable to make it this time.

One thing we our family and Chris’s family got together, we always played games. My aunt Chris had a pool table and dart board down in the basement, which is where I would hang out and play both games with cousins.

Upstairs, there would always be card games being played. The game of choice was usually Rook, as my cousin Garry and his wife Cathi were pro players. If you beat them, then you were pretty good. 

This year’s get together was held at my cousin Adrianna’s church in the children’s space. And we had plenty of games to play from cornhole to having a basketball goal.

At the table, we had a big game of Uno going. Now, playing just regular Uno can get pretty cutthroat with this bunch. If you get stuck between Garry or any of his bunch, you’re going to have a long night of getting skips, draw-twos and draw-fours. It’s even been rumored that someone drew blood after a particular game finished up.

This game was worse as my brother, Jonathan, brought an even more diabolical version of the popular card game, “Uno No Mercy.” Why it’s worse is because there are even bigger draw cards of six or 10 cards. There are draw-fours with embedded reverses. There’s even a draw card that you inflict on the next person that requires them to pick a color to draw, and they have to keep drawing until pick up that color. They have to keep all of those cards in their hands without playing a single card. I was eliminated after I got that card a couple of times. There are cards where you exchange hands with one person or move them around the table.

So we had a big game of this version of Uno going on Saturday, and the game went on for nearly an hour. There were a lot of hurt feelings exchanged in that game as folks would get close, but then they’d have to swap hands with someone else. Or they would get one of those deadly draws where they would be forced to draw 10 cards or more. Once you get more than 25 cards, you’re out.

After all was said and done, the youngest cousin beat us all. She just happened to get the right cards at the right time. No one was able to play the last card from their hand, but one-by-one we all were dropping like flies.

The ones who said they hated playing that game probably secretly loved it. They just hated losing the game.

I like to look at these moments of family times as learning life lessons. Games and life are not always fair. We have to make the best of it. When you lose, you have to get back up and try again. That’s the only way you get better.

But that being said, I still don’t like losing.

Brent Maze is the publisher of The Selma Times-Journal. He can be reached at brent.maze@selmatimesjournal.com.