Crazy Aunt Lila

 

My journey with mahjong has been 20 years in the making, starting in a place I never expected flu shot clinics. I was tech support for a home health agency.  It was a wonderful job.  The clinical staff that I supported were the best people I have ever met.  They were great at their job but what made them so special was that they really cared for the patient and so do I.  

Usually, I sat in an office doing my thing with software, laptops and phones, but occasionally I volunteered at the front line. When the agency held flu shot clinics it was all hands-on deck.  We would go to these fifty-five + communities or assisted living facilities and the nurses would administer the vaccines and I would help keep the crowd moving.  Often we would be doing the clinic in their club house and inevitably there would be a group playing mahjong.  sometimes they would ask me to play and of course I said no because 1. I didn't know how and 2.  wasn't it a game for old people? I was in my early forties. Though I spent most of my time troubleshooting technology, my occasional forays into the frontline opened unexpected doors.

Let me just say you CAN NOT Learn mahjong just by watching.  I also had no desire to play.  Fast forward twenty years.  We sold our house, I retired from my tech job and I found a part time job.  I was facing a real dilemma.  What do I do with my free time.  I have been working since I was sixteen.  I am the kind of person that hates sitting around doing nothing.  When I was doing a lot of driving for work, I listened to audio books because I felt all that driving was wasted time.

Then, my Crazy Aunt Lila passed away. Aunt Lila was my Dad's younger sister and Muriel was the eldest.  I loved them both but they were a little different.  Who wouldn't be with a Mom like they had.  Let's just say she wasn't motherly or grandmotherly. She scared me and I stayed as far away from her as possible. 

Lila was passionate about mahjong.  She had a neighborhood game That game took precedent over everything else.  If we wanted to have a family event that wasn't a major holiday, we would have to consult Lila to make sure it didn't conflict with her mahjong game.

As I mentioned before two years ago, she passed away.  I coincided with my newfound free time.   I decided to learn how to play. With retirement, free time became my new puzzle to solve—a challenge my Aunt Lila, with her lifelong mahjong passion, would play a key role in. From heaven above she whispered in my ear "Susan learn how to play mahjong!"

I found this wonderful teacher and after a few lessons she set me loose.  At first, I was getting whooped.  I confess I was so depressed I thought about quitting.  But I am not a quitter, so I just kept playing.  I started getting better and actually started winning a few games.  I am now playing twice a week and really enjoying it. I found it stimulates my brain and let me just say I am always trying to add activities to my day that stimulate brain activity. I was lucky to find a great group of people who had a lot of patience and allowed me to play with them.  I recently played in a League and my partner, and I came in first.

By the way that online mahjong game (see below) that lots of people play is not mahjong, it is matching tiles that uses mahjong tiles to make you think it is something else.

If you are even thinking of learning to play do it.  Just know it is not something you learn over night. Be kind to yourself and be patient and don;t give up!