I Doubt It

When I lived in St. Helens we used to have barbecues about twice a month. They were tremendous fun. Most of the attendees were from church, so it was a very family-friendly gathering. No smoking, alcohol, etc. No clothing-challenged individuals. Language so clean that euphemisms like dang were never heard. (This may be important)

Due to our large yard, there were sometimes volleyball games played. Very fun.

Due to our two stories, we often gathered upstairs to play Foosball or Nintendo 64. Outstanding entertainment.

Due to our large living room, we either played pool or ping-pong. I miss those days a lot.

And sometimes we would have lots of people, so we would gather around and play a card game called I Doubt It.

The idea of the game is to get rid of all the cards in your hand. But they must be played in sequence. The first person plays any number of cards from their hand, claiming them to be Aces. the second person then plays any number of cards from their hand, claiming they are deuces and so forth until Kings are played, at which point it would be back to Aces.

Of course, sometimes when it was your turn you may not have the required cards in hand in which case a bluff would be enacted. You would throw in say...a 6 instead of a 5, but since they were face-down nobody knew this. Unless, of course, they had all the fives themselves.

Anytime someone made a suspicious play, anyone else could say, "I doubt it." The cards played would be exposed. If the player had indeed thrown what they claimed, the challenger had to take all the cards from the middle into their hand. If the player had NOT thrown what he claimed, however, then HE had to take all the cards into his hand.

Sometimes the pile in the middle would get quite large, and nobody would want to take them so you had to be VERY sure about challenging.

So in the middle of one particularly challenging game, the pile in the center was humongous. Every play was careful and people checked their cards feverishly hoping to catch someone else or come up with a way not to get caught.

One guy who was almost out (if you got rid of all the cards in your hand, you won by being "out") and had not been caught made a play. Another player happened to have all four of that card in his hand and challenged.

He had not challenged all game and had been waiting for his chance. he got a bit flustered as he jumped to his feet, threw down the four cards of the rank named face-up to illustrate he KNEW this guy was caught, and shouted his challenge.

Now, some of you may know I Doubt It by some of its other names.

Some of you, remembering the sentence I earlier said might be important already know how he challenged. Suffice it to say, he did not say "I Doubt It" but rather...well, the other popular name for the game is listed on the link.

This would have gone over much better had two preachers not been in the crowd at that particular barbecue.

And yes, I still laugh to this day whenever someone says, "I doubt it".