On this page I will detail a couple of 'quests' I am perpetually on for lost information or more details on something I remember.
Many of them are things I encountered at a young age, before the information superhighway is was it is now. Childhood mysteries linger; I know the facts as I remember them may no longer be accurate. I have smoothed the memories with time bby overhandling them.
I am actively interested in information on these subjects; email traumaturge@proton.me with any leads.
When I was young, I was sent to a camp for young christian women each year. I occasionally experienced kinds of social torture that could erupt unpleasantly from long hours of pleasant, golden summer without warning, especially when it got dark.
I no longer live in the area, so it does not compromise my privacy to say that this camp was in northern Minnesota. The naming of things tends to be regional, so that may be important for this mystery.
The girls were seperated by ages. The oldest girls, fifteen to seventeen, were boarded in a rather old, rather ricketly large structure in the woods we called 'the white house.' The white house had mice; the white house was not really seperate from the outside in a way that mattered, except for the mosquito screens (which were very important, as northern Minnesota is a wet, flat, lake-filled place, and it bloos with mosquitos in the summer). One could walk through the rafters from room to room and hear anything anyone said. Though we were not in reality far from the rest of the camp, outside, all one could see was trees.
Girls just a little younger, ages thirteen to fifteen, were housed in a clutch of four small cabins on the top of a hill. That hike up the hill was dreaded after a long day. It was in one of those small cabins that I played one-card reynard for the first and second time and third time, the only times I ever played it.
Or maybe one card renard. Or one-card renard, with a hyphen? I don't think I misheard 'Reynard', at least I can't think of anything else that it could have been, and the name was repeated several times.
All players sat in a circle. There would have been at least four players. I was invited in because they were short of hands; the other girls could always tell there was something 'wrong' with me and generally I was invited along if I had to be.
I asked them what one-card reynard was. They did not respond. I sat and ask again, and was told that I'd see what it was.
The dealer, a girl with social savvy and natural charisma, put down a shuffled deck of cards in the middle of the circle. She said,
The name of the game is One-Card Reynard. The rules are there are no rules. The game starts now.
The game started. She dealt cards to every player. No one said a word. After a number of cards was handled out that I can't recall—likely four again, or another number that I wouldn't have considered too much or too little—players started putting down cards down into a face-up pile by the face-down pile in a clockwise circle.
When the hand of the invisible clock struck me, at six o'clock by my reckoning (as I was closest to the door behind me), I hesitated. "What am I supposed to put down?" I asked.
The dealer handed me a card from the face-down pile. "One card for talking."
I took the card. I looked at the cards in my hand and the card on the face-up pile. I guessed and chose one to put on top of it. The clock hand moved to the girl at nine o'clock and the game went on.
Memory no longer serves me the details about the rules for putting cards down. I do recall I never felt totally certain even though I played the game a few times.
The game permitted no speaking outside of a handful of short phrases; "I win", declaring someone had broken a rule, disagreeing that someone broke a rule. When there was a debate, the winner of the debate was pardoned; whoever was proven wrong was punished with drawing two cards, one for speaking at all, and one for being wrong.
Like Go Fish, the goal of the game was to rid your hand of cards. I believe the game ended when someone reached one, not zero, though I might recall wrong. Most games like that go until someone has an empty hand.
Most importantly, the game went in a certain number of rounds. I don't recall how many, and I have a vague sense there was an end goal, perhaps a point total, that I never reached and perhaps never fathomed, that signaled no more rounds would be played. At the end of each round, there was a sigh, and a brief paused in the ban on speaking. Points were tallied, compliments were given; it was still not allowed to discuss rules.
Whoever just one that round was usually quiet, lost in thought. That was because, when the next round started, they were allowed to enforce a new rule. They did not tell anyone what the rule was, they just dealt cards for breaking it once the next round started. They did have to tell the recipient why they had just been dealt a punishment card; those could be silly, like "One card for not singing a camp song before putting down a three," or distressing and befuddling, like, "One card for not following the rule of nine," causing everyone to scramble to figure out what marthematical puzzle had just been imposed on them and follow it from then on.
When players started figuring out new rules, they would take it on themselves to punish anyone not following them; if they had not understood the rule correctly, the one who had made it would say "one card for unfair punishment" and deal them a new card as well.
I never won one-card renard. I never fully figured out the rules. I found out when I went back home that no one had ever heard of it.
Subsequent research, years later, informs me that what I played was a version of Mao, a card game in which discussion is discouraged, the rules are secret to new players, and the game ends when someone empties their hand. I do however remember slight differences; the rules of Mao indicates some talking is allowed, just not discussion of the rules or excess chatter, whereas one-card reynard permitted no speaking outside of a handful of short phrases.
The handful of rule differences that I recall well and the odd difference of the name of the game makes me think I encountered a version that either this girl or someone she knew significantly altered, perhaps a pocket version of Mao that was known in that time in that area of the state (or whatever area she came from).
Having found record of similar games, I am now more intrigued by the name of the version I played than anything else, along with its apprently unique throoughness in enforcing silence aside from acts of punishment or argument. (In the version I played, you couldn't even compliment a move or ask a clarifying question without being punished again.)
I cannot tell you why someone renamed the game to one-card renard. Perhaps they didn't remember the name or didn't know the person it referenced and chose to call it something else. I can't tell you why they those the name they chose either. Obviously, the fact that the two parts of the name rhymed is probably why they chose 'Reynard' to compliment 'One Card.' But in an area where knowing who Zedong Mao is taxes the average person's knowledge of the world outside the united states, knowing the name of Reynard the Fox seems implausible.
Sir Reynard is an excellent literary/mythological figure to name a card game after. Naming a game of social pressure and trickery after him is even better. But I feel like there is a mystery in the name here that I just can't crack.
Did I mishear 'Reynard'? Is 'Renard' really a reference to someone or something else with that name that I do not know about? This all happened, again, in Minnesota in the 2000s; any leads would be appreciated. Email is up top.
Someday, I must write a story that heavily features one-card reynard/renard. Its potential use as a metaphor or conceit is just too rich. The game it must be based on, Mao, is textually an allegory for living in a totalitarian surveillance society in which every move is being watched and any social slight is punished. That I was taught that game at a girls' camp in which all the girls were trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with me without asking make it sound like someone was writing my life at the time, and they were being a bit heavy-handed.
(I was queer, but didn't know that at time time, making it even funnier that I didn't know and couldn't figure out the rules.)