I like playing games. I’m hard to beat at Boggle but I don’t absolutely have to win a game to like it. It’s good enough if I can win them sometimes, which is why I quit playing gin rummy with Dave because he clearly cheated or else why didn’t I ever win even once? How was it the last card he played was always the exact card I needed? Why do I always lose to this guy? I mean, if this were basketball, sure.

So I don’t consider myself a poor sport just because there are some games I refuse to play. Like Nertz. It’s competitive group solitaire. Right there, it’s wrong. The whole point of solitaire is that you are by yourself. When I play solitaire, I might come to a point I think I’m all done, and I’m sad. And then a little later I think: Or, I could play that black seven on the red eight, and I could keep going. And then I’m all happy.

And nobody has to know how long it took me to see it.

I play Nertz like a sloth at a sushi train. Inviting me to play that stupid game is like asking a T. rex to spike a volleyball. In short—which I am—I don’t have what it takes. I prove it every day. I can stare at a gadget drawer for minutes looking for the spatula with the bright red handle. Can’t find it until I’ve given up looking everywhere else and go back to the drawer and it’s right there in the middle, on top.

Clearly this is some sort of brain deficit, or as I prefer to think of it, quirk. I looked it up. The term for it is Slow Processing Speed. Which sounds bad, but as King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, the race is not to the swift.

Which would be awesome if it were true.

In reality, I read a lot about Slow Processing Speed and no one seems to think there is an upside. But I believe I’m intelligent in certain very limited areas that are not useful to anybody. Metaphor, for instance.

So, how you play this solitaire game is you have like thirty thousand decks and a bunch of people with big smacky hands and everyone tries to get rid of their cards by playing them all at once and it’s this whole frenzy. Meanwhile I’m off to the side paralyzed, a veritable exhibit in the Gamers Wax Museum, completely unable to recognize an open spot and a card to fill it in time to beat the next person. At some point I just grab one of my cards—one—and hover over the table determined to find the next available slot for that one card and not get completely skunked. But I still can’t see it in time. It’s pitiful.

I’m the old lady staring motionless at a digital ticket kiosk while everyone on the platform is slapping each other with fish and getting on the train. Which is to say: nothing makes sense.

Nertz isn’t solitaire. It’s a circle jerk. And since I can quickly see that I will never ever win this game, not ever, or even get rid of a single card, I don’t want to play. That’s not being a bad sport. That’s removing myself from a dangerous situation with grace.

Some people like to do the deed and some people just like to watch.