As a native Michigander, I am familiar with the stereotype that everyone from Michigan plays Euchre. I see your stereotype and raise you, because not only do I play Euchre, I play Pinochle, Gin Rummy and Cribbage, and what’s more, I think everyone else should, too. Collectively and rightly, we do a lot of handwringing over our dependence on technology. Many of us recognize it for the spiritual sickness it is as we look for ways to reorient our lives away from screens. Younger people are at a particular disadvantage because phones have always been ubiquitous for them. Practically speaking, they don’t know what life without screens looks like. Gen Z and millennials have found a path back to happier habits in Grandma Hobbies, or Granny Core, as it’s called. In an effort to learn how to live without screens, they are knitting and sewing and doing all sorts of old things with their young hands, and it’s working. From a recent NPR article: “A 2024 study from scientists at Anglia Ruskin University in England found that crafters reported higher levels of happiness and life satisfaction. They also reported a stronger sense that life is worthwhile.” Granny Core is a great start in bringing us back to our human center, but here’s another suggestion to cure the spiritual sickness of screen dependence. Let’s usher in a new trend called Grandpa Core. Let’s play cards together. Fifty-two cards. That’s all it takes to play over a thousand games. I think about those 52 cards a lot, especially in regard to my dad, who epitomized Grandpa Core by being annoyingly great at counting cards. The man would have his Euchre partner pick up a nine when he only had a 10 and an ace in his hand, yet he’d win every time because he knew where all the cards were. His card playing doesn’t get enough credit for how facile his mind was to the very end of his 87 years. Mental elasticity is a great advantage to playing cards, but family time is another. My husband and I have three kids, ages 9 to 16, and finding ways to spend time together as a family is a challenge. Looking back at my own screen-free childhood, I recall Sunday afternoons when three generations sat at the kitchen table dealing cards for Pinochle, Euchre, or Hand and Foot. There was no ageist division to what our Sundays looked like. No teenagers were upstairs scrolling on their phones. We were all one in the deck. By age 7, while I wasn’t as good as my dad at counting cards, I was good enough to tell my grandpa to “stay home, partner” when I had both Bowers. Every one of my siblings played cards, as did my aunts, my parents and my parents’ parents. We pulled tricks, ate my mom’s Chex mix, and learned to listen to our partners. The ritual of card playing, the idiosyncratic rules of our house, the knowing to knock on the table to pass on cutting the deck, they all amounted to a language my family spoke together. Sometimes the language was smack talk, but usually it was the free-flowing chat that comes from sitting for hours in relaxed company where the only obligation is to shuffle well and deal squarely. I want my children to know this way of spending time, so this week we are diving into Grandpa Core and learning to play Spades. My family and I are on an even playing field, as none of us knows how to play, but it looks a lot like Pinochle, a game I could play in my sleep, so I have every intention of dominating my kids. If I learned anything from my card-counting father, it’s that in cards, being young or old is not necessarily an advantage, but neither is it a reason to not deal in and compete. What playing cards offers is a place where grandparents, old aunts, teen brothers and baby sisters can meet in an activity where our hands and cards do the talking, and we have the opportunity to be human and play together. This Sunday, put down your screens and pick up a deck. If you don’t know how to play, call up your oldest relative — the one you roll your eyes at because they have 64 tabs open on their phone and can’t figure out why their phone is dying. What they don’t know in technology, they make up for in card strategy, and honestly, their skill set is much more life-affirming and worthwhile. Embrace Grandpa Core, deal them in and be a part of making screen dependence a lost art.   Molly Jo Rose is a writer living with her husband and three children in Fort Wayne, where they are parishioners at St. John the Baptist. She walks a lot and writes a little. The post ‘Grandpa Core’ and the Lost Art of Playing Cards appeared first on Today's Catholic. ...read more read less