Ja... King of UNO!

The Day... Saturday.

The time? Nine o'clock in the evening.

The house was quiet as a mouse, save for the low hum of my laptop and the soft whir of the bedroom ceiling fan. Everybody else in the house was knocked out sleep... My brother, "Milk and Cookies", my sister "Kentucky".... even my cat Oscar Tyrone was stretched out at the foot of my bed, lost in la-la land...

All of a sudden my phone rings, startling me something crazy. Even Oscar-Tyrone sat up straight, his ears in perking up, eyes wide, ready to attack... or run and hide.

I looked at the caller ID. It was the my neighbor and coworker, the Infamous Hen-Dog (who lives a few houses down the street from me)...



"Yeah, man," I answered.

"Lee, what chu doin'?"

"Looking at blogs, playing on my laptop. Why?"

Now anytime Hen calls that late on a weekend night, he is on his way over. It's always "So-n-so wanna see your house" or "I need to burn some CDs on your laptop" or "What you cook tonight, gal?". Some craziness like that.

"Ja wanna come over and play some UNO," he said.

"Dude," I said quickly. "Dude, give me about 30 minutes to get up and put on some clothes, just hold on. Come on, dude."

I had to tell him that because his convos are usually ended with "I'm about to ring your doorbell right now."

Well, I mentioned Ja. Ja is in town for the summer. Ja is Hen's thirteen-year-old son...

This has to be the happiest kid in the world. Always smiling, always polite... skipping along like a doggone smurf...

So I laughed real hard when lil Hen-Dog, Jr. strutted through my door shuffling a well worn deck of UNO cards.



Now I hadn't played UNO in years. It was the card game of choice for me and my crew back in the 80's, but Ja came through the door with his cards (which were red instead of black. When did that happen??) pretty confident about his UNO expertise.

I immediately went upstairs and woke up a snoring "Milk and Cookies". He'd had army reserve drills all that day and was pretty much exhausted. I drug his dazed behind out of bed and shoved him into the bathroom. I told him to take a leak and come on downstairs. (Okay, I still treat him like he's 3.)

I needed some help beating Mr. Ja at UNO, you see.

First of all, there were some bootleg rules. Some craziness like if you have 2 or more Draw Fours in your hand, then you can throw them all down, thereby having to draw Eight to sixteen cards. If you have a bunch of any cards in your hand, you can throw them all down at the same time.



Like I said, completely bootleg.

I agreed to these stupid rules...

I went and got my laptop computer and loaded up some old school jams. Ja knew every doggone song, and sang his lil' heart out. I thought the music would be enough to distract Ja, but it only served to get him going.

Ja started winning games, which completely unnerved me.

And whenever he was on a winning streak, or if he would win a game (which he did consistently), he would jump up and dance for a few minutes.



We played for three hours straight... Let's just say Ja got his dance on quite often.



Now, I wanted to yell, "Hey Shorty! Why don't you spin around in the middle of that dance move and close that kitchen cabinet for me" or "Hey lil' man, why don't you moonwalk over there to the counter, pick up the thing of carpet freshner and Febreze spray and throw them under the sink for me!"

That would've given me a chance to slide my brother Milk and Cookies some Draw Fours, some Draw twos... something to get that lil' joker with, but as you can see, Milk and Cookies was concentrating hard, like he was taking a test or something...



I finally surrendered at one in the morning... Poor Milk and Cookies had to get up at five in the morning to get ready for his military drills. I had to go ahead on and admit that Ja was the man... I had to give him his props...

He was indeed the UNO king of the world!



But that's alright, though. I'm gonna get my practice on...

And I'm going to give the lil' Hen-Dog Jr. a run for his title!!