There are, of course, other memories but the rest usually have painful associations. With bridge, the most painful memory I have is of a collegiate tournament where we were losing to the eventual winners by hundreds of points. We met during a break, the four of us, and decided to play for broke. We took chances only mad players would take but it worked -- the final margin was just 3 points. The hands of the winning team's captain tremored as he tallied up the points. Not too bad a memory for a tournament we did not win.
So, when I wandered into Yahoo and found that among the online games there was a bridge board, I yelped in delight. None of the people I played with would bid Precision (my bidding system of choice) and the playing standards vary wildly but I've spent six hours there already.
Of course, I can not help trying to recreate fond memories. I emailed my three buddies to see if we could set up an internet game. One of them has recently bought a house and was moving that weekend; the other was trying to finish as much of his dissertation as possible so that he could make some money as an intern this summer. The third fellow, having sampled everything from metallurgy to hockey to nuclear engineering and microbiology was settling into food science and could not be reached. The days when a holler across the corridor would set up a marathon bridge session are now over.
