Wow!

Speaking of triggering stories...🤔

I used to buy and trade and even do a little gambling with baseball cards when I was a kid...

Mickey Mantle was inevitably one of my heroes, as (at the time) I lived on Long Island in the state of New York, home of the Yankees. My, oh my, has that state degenerated since those days; but looking back, I can see the seeds of that decline, though they were totally invisible to me at the time.

The "gambling" was something that I was very bad at... it typically involved one of two methods (of which I've forgotten certain details, but may still be able to describe in a general fashion) :

• Each party to the bet would hold a card (landscape mode) between thumb and fingers, palm up, and then rapidly pull the hand backwards while releasing the thumb from the top edge of the card. This would cause the card to flutter to the floor, rotating fairly rapidly and somewhat randomly around its long axis. The bet somehow involved how the two cards landed on the floor, whether face up or down.

• Alternatively, each party would grasp a card between index and pointer fingers and flip it, Frisbee style, through the air toward a wall. The card would spin rapidly around its center of gravity; at times, it would remain in more or less the same plane on its way toward the wall; at other times, it would spiral one or more times between the player and the wall. Upon hitting the wall, it would then flutter randomly to the floor where, once again, the bet depended on which face ended up.

Ah, I've found this write-up that better describes the rules and the outcome, as well as a variant of the "against the wall" version of the game...

Lydon, thanks for stimulating these childhood memories! And when, God willing, we roll through your neighborhood one day and are blessed with the opportunity to meet your family in person, won't you please show me your fine baseball card collection?🙏😃

😄😇😉