The Queens Are Wild

A celebration of the little girls who shook up hundreds of years of card game history.

When my daughter went to summer camp for the first time, an older kid taught her how to tie her shoes. The next week she learned to whistle. Over her first summer, she also learned how to change into her bathing suit in a port-a-potty, and how to eat a peanut butter sandwich at the beach without getting a mouthful of sand.

As a teacher, I am used to a world of order and structure, so to me, summer camp seems like a madhouse free-for-all. The teenagers are in charge, and the whole scene is powered by sunscreen and popsicles. Someone is always spraying a hose, and a speaker is blasting top 40 hits. But then, maybe that’s why kids love it so much.

Last year was my daughter’s fourth year at the same camp. Each year she’s gone, a different card game has risen in popularity. Cards rule the day, and no matter how young you are, you’d better know that spades are pointed and clubs look like flowers, if you’re going to fit in and find friends!

In other years, kids played cards on spread-out beach towels, cooler lids, or underneath the slide on the playground, to hide from the sun. Even last summer though, in the midst of the pandemic, the kids played with plastic cards that could be sanitized, and all sat six feet apart with masks and gloves, standing up and walking to the center to take their turn.

It feels fitting that the popular card game of summer 2020 was called ‘Trash.’ I don’t know how it got its name, but kids also interchangeably called it ‘Garbage’ and ‘Junk’. Fitting, right?

When my daughter taught it to us — her very uncool parents — she explained the rules with confidence. Even though she’d just finished 3rd grade, she talked like a high schooler, flipping her hair and saying ‘like’ every other word. It was pretty clear — and also pretty adorable — she was channeling the energy of her very cool counselors.

The game is just another variation on the theme of getting a bunch of cards and trying to get rid of them, before anyone else does.

As my daughter wrapped up her explanation, though, I was struck by the final rule.

“Oh yeah, one more thing,” she told us. “The Queens are wild. That means a queen can be anything you want it to be.”

I asked her to explain a little more and she told me that when the counselors taught her and her friends how to play, the Jacks were the wildcards.

“But we’re girls,” she explained, “so we changed it and made the Queens wild instead.”

My heart swelled to think of these little girls, empowered to think that the girl playing cards should have every opportunity afforded to the boy playing cards. Of course, they should think that — but honestly, did it ever occur to you that there’s sexism hidden even in the rules of basic summer camp card games?

But then my heart broke for them too. At summer camp, when it comes to card games called ‘Trash’, changing the rules is as easy as making a declarative statement. In the real world though, changing the rules is hard. There are dead ends and setbacks. There are systems and people who will not want the Queens to be wild.

These smart, sassy little girls will grow up and learn that the world is full of injustices. They’ll see that card games are just one of many areas where men have more opportunities than women.

For now, though, they’re ten years old. They love how they look in bathing suits, and they fill their days with cannonballs and cartwheels. They have freckles and friendship bracelets and they believe the Queens can be anything.

And although I know they’re growing up fast, I hope that never changes.