In my house, the Uno cards are kept in a special bag, one with the words, “Shut Your Whore Mouth,” written on the side. My friend Mari brought the bag back for me from a trip to Vegas, and while I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the use she originally imagined for it I can’t help but think that she (and all of Vegas) would be happy with where it ended up. After all, Vegas is a town known for cut-throat card games, and in my house, nothing gets more brutal than Uno.
Let’s start with the rules—or rather, the lack thereof. When we first started playing Uno as a family, one member of the family (who shall not be named, but his initials are D.A.D.) tried to insist that we play by the “rules.” The rest of us scoffed at him, first because we didn’t believe that Uno actually had rules, and then, after he went out and bought a new pack of cards just to get a copy of the rules, because the rules were dumb. Not all of the rules, mind you, just the one that says you can’t lay a “Draw Four” on someone if you have an alternate card to play. That rule just seemed like unnecessary interference into the Free Trade Free For All that is a healthy game of Uno. It’s a Nanny State rule in an otherwise Libertarian game. The whole point of Uno (I think) is that, one, it teaches children that the world is nothing but formlessness, chaos and void, and that the only order that exists is the order we impose upon it, and two, that life isn’t fair. Sometimes you get a “Draw Four” card slapped down on you over and over again for no other reason than the fact that your sister is sitting next to you and she is still angry that you took the last grape popsicle.
Which brings us to the second Uno “rule” that my family has chosen to disregard: it turns out that some people, apparently, insert their own rule into Uno decreeing that you never have to draw more than four cards at a time, no matter how rotten your luck is. The reasoning behind this rule is that making children suffer is upsetting for them. To which I answer, well, duh, of course it’s upsetting. That’s the whole point of Uno—to piss other people off. What, you thought it was a game of skill? It’s a game of schemes. A pack of Uno cards should be on the banners of at least half of the houses in Game of Thrones.
Which brings us to the final rule that my family regularly flouts: the “no cheating” rule. True, this isn’t an actual rule listed in the rulebook, and also true, most families don’t even feel the need to spell this one out (like the “no murder” rule, some things are just assumed), but in my family cheating is just considered another strategy.
Leave your cards visible? Expect to have your hand looked at. Hesitate for even a nanosecond to perhaps clear your throat or even breathe before you acknowledge your single card status? Expect to have shouts of “UNO!” rain down on you. And finally: get up to go the bathroom, take a phone call or engage in any “non-Uno” related matter and expect to find your hand liberally stuffed with extra cards upon your return. Smart enough to take your cards with you? Then expect to have the deck stacked against you when you get back. (Quickly stacking a deck is something we all learned to do in our Candyland days. If you never learned this then that means you either never had kids or are still playing the last game of Candyland you started. I hope for your sake it’s the former.)
Some families, I’m sure, pass on other, healthier traditions to their kids. They volunteer at the food bank for Thanksgiving, or adopt a stretch of highway to keep clean. And I’m sure the children in those families all grow up to be happy, healthy and productive members of society—benefits to mankind each and every one.
God help them if they ever sit down to play a “friendly” game of Uno with my kids.