Last Tuesday, I’m sitting at my computer when I got a notification. “GranJean47 has challenged you to a game.” My 73-year-old grandmother figured out how to send game invites. Twenty minutes later, she’s absolutely destroying me while texting me tips about which cards to hold.
Here’s what kills me: we spent all this time worrying about the “digital divide” and whether older people could keep up with technology. Meanwhile, my grandmother’s over here building her online holi rummy empire while I’m still trying to remember my password.
They Were Already Playing 4D Chess While We Were Learning Checkers
The thing is, we got the whole story backwards. We thought the hard part would be the technology. Wrong. The hard part is the actual game – tracking discards, calculating odds, remembering what everyone’s collecting, all while pretending you don’t notice Frank always touches his ear when he’s about to go out.
My grandfather’s been doing this mental gymnastics since 1962. The man can tell you exactly what cards are left in play while simultaneously arguing about politics and eating a sandwich. You think clicking “Draw Card” instead of physically picking it up is going to stop him? Please.
I watched him learn the online version. Took him maybe an hour to figure out the interface. Then he immediately started complaining that the computer players were “too predictable” and went looking for human opponents. Within a week, he’d found his people – a bunch of other retirees who play every morning at 6 AM because “that’s when the servers run fastest.”
The Part That Actually Pisses Me Off
You want to know what’s genuinely annoying? The way these apps are designed. Not for older players – for anyone with actual human eyes.
Everything’s tiny. The cards overlap so much you can barely see what you’re holding. The buttons are these microscopic little circles that even I miss half the time, and I’m 34. My mom accidentally folded a winning hand last week because the “Declare” button is right next to the “Drop” button. She threw her reading glasses across the room.
And the timers. Jesus, the timers. In real life, nobody’s standing over your shoulder counting down from 30 seconds while you decide whether to pick up that queen. But online? The aggressive countdown starts immediately, getting louder and more panic-inducing until you just click something, anything, to make it stop.
My dad calls it “stress rummy.” He’s not wrong.
What Teaching Them Is Really Like
Everyone imagines teaching older relatives technology is this nightmare scenario. It’s not. It’s more like… remember teaching your kid to ride a bike? Lots of wobbling at first, one spectacular crash into the recycling bins, but then suddenly they’re gone and you’re running after them yelling “SLOW DOWN!”
My mom’s journey went like this: Week one, she couldn’t figure out how to join a game. Week two, she accidentally spent $20 on coins thinking she was practicing. Week three, she discovered tournament mode. Week four, she’s lecturing me about “pot odds” and “fishing for sets” using terminology I’ve never heard.
The real surprise? She’s good. Like, really good. Turns out when you’ve been playing cards for 40 years, you develop instincts that transfer perfectly online. She knows when someone’s bluffing about being close to winning. She can tell when someone’s holding cards just to block others. These skills didn’t disappear just because the cards turned digital.
The Weird Social Thing Nobody Expected
My parents’ friend group has this monthly rummy night they’ve been doing for fifteen years. When COVID hit, they thought it was over. Then someone’s kid showed them how to play online.
Now they play twice a week.
The physical distance doesn’t matter anymore. When Jerry moved to Florida for his arthritis, he didn’t have to leave the group. When Susan’s husband got sick and she couldn’t leave the house much, she could still make game night. They’re closer now than when they all lived in the same neighborhood.
But here’s the weird part: they’re making new friends too. My mom’s in this online rummy group with some woman from New Zealand, a retired teacher from Michigan, and somebody from Quebec who types in French half the time. They’ve never met in person. They talk every day.
Why Grandma Doesn’t Rage-Quit
My grandmother has this supernatural ability to lose five games in a row and remain completely pleasant. Meanwhile, I nearly punched my monitor yesterday because someone took the card I needed.
I asked her about it. She said, “Honey, I lived through polio, Vietnam, disco, and your teenage years. You think losing fake money in a card game is going to ruin my day?”
Fair point.
But there’s something else. She doesn’t have the same weird relationship with online games that we do. She’s not trying to maintain a ranking or protect her stats. She’s just playing cards. If she loses, she loses. Tomorrow there’ll be another game.
This drives younger players insane, by the way. Nothing frustrates the hardcore players more than someone who absolutely doesn’t care about their win percentage.
The Scams, Though
Okay, we need to talk about the dark side for a second. These online rummy platforms know exactly what they’re doing with older players, and some of it’s pretty gross.
First, there’s the constant pushing to buy coins. “SPECIAL OFFER! 70% OFF! LIMITED TIME!” My dad gets about twelve of these pop-ups per session. They’re designed to create urgency, to make you feel like you’re missing out. He fell for it exactly once, bought $50 worth of coins, then felt stupid about it for weeks.
Then there’s the bots. Oh my god, the bots. They don’t tell you you’re playing against computers, but suddenly “Jennifer238” is making moves no human would make, playing at 3 AM, and never, ever chatting. My parents thought they were making friends. Nope. Just algorithms designed to keep them playing.
What This Actually Means
Look, I’m not trying to paint some rosy picture where every grandparent seamlessly transitions to digital gaming. My uncle still prints out emails. My aunt thinks the internet closes at night. That’s fine.
But for the ones who do make the jump? It’s changing things in ways nobody really predicted.
My grandmother plays rummy with her sister every morning. They live 500 miles apart. They haven’t lived in the same state since 1978. But every morning at 7:30, they’re at the same virtual table, complaining about their husbands and gossiping about their kids while organizing their cards.
That’s not a small thing. That’s everything.
And maybe that’s what we missed when we were worrying about whether they could “keep up” with technology. They don’t need to keep up. They just need to find the parts that matter to them. For my grandmother, that’s playing cards with her sister. The fact that it happens through an iPad is just logistics.
She still can’t figure out how to update apps. She accidentally FaceTimes me at least once a week when she’s trying to call normally. She refers to every notification as “that thing that’s dinging.”
But she’ll absolutely wreck you at rummy while doing it.
The last time we played, she beat me three games straight, sent me a message that just said “better luck next time sweetie,” and then logged off to watch Jeopardy.
I’m starting to think we’ve been worried about the wrong generation this whole time.
