OCEAN BEACH, NY—Moments after being called to the dining room table and briefed on a lengthy set of rules, local woman Shayla Meyer reported Tuesday that her relationship with Matt Brickell had apparently reached the point where she had to learn his family’s weird card games. “Okay, so everyone gets seven cards that you want to arrange by suit, and starting to the left of the dealer, we all take turns drawing a card from the deck and adding its value to the face-up ‘community card’ in the middle,” said Brickell’s father to Meyer, who nodded politely during a three-minute explanation of the so-called “kitty” and “trump suits” while simultaneously coming to the realization that, as long as her relationship continued, she would be expected to play this game with her boyfriend’s family every time they were all together. “You should also know that before each hand, the person who took the most tricks in the previous round can call out ‘gingersnap,’ and you have to switch one of your cards with the person sitting opposite you. You got all that?” Meyer added that she was looking forward to the point in the relationship where she could pretend to be tired and go upstairs to watch TV.

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