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Doug Wickline was a little guy, fiercely competitive, and not just a bridge player but a golfer too. And not just any golfer. He had the best hustler swing I ever saw. His right elbow flew out at the top of his backswing, he came over the top, his shots started low and looked like a hacker's slice, and he putted with a 2- dollar putter he found at the Salvation Army. You knew, you just knew, he was easy money. Wrong. He was a hell of a golfer. And a good bridge player.
All of us were draftees. All of us got in before Vietnam heated up. And every day we played bridge.
I didn't play bridge much after the army, but twenty years later I started working cruise ships and they had bridge games. I learned two things. One, passengers were surprised by a comedian who could play decent bridge. Two, we had bridge lecturers come on board and a lot of them were world-class players. I loved it.
Best of all, bridge had become a better game over the years. In the old days, if you had bad cards, you got bored to death while the other team won hand after hand. Ah, but experts found that bad hands weren't that bad after all. Long suits were valuable, both to play and to bid to get in the way of opponents bidding. Duplicate and IMP scoring meant you could compare results with people playing the same hands. In short, it's become the best card game I've ever played.
Now, I play at the Bridge Club of Chiangmai and it's been a lifesaver. There's not much to do on a blazing hot Thai afternoon and the air-conditioned bridge club solved that. I've been playing about ten years and I've made lots of friends there. I still love bridge. I'm not the best player but I'm not bad and even though I overdose now and then I always find I enjoy it when I get back. I'm just going to play less often.