According to Hoyle

A cheerful, older woman cooking at her stove.

I grew up on the east end of Long Island hearing my mother, the daughter of eastern European immigrants, repeatedly say when things did not go quite as planned, “It didn’t go according to Hoyle.” The expression was so commonplace in our home that I never gave it a second thought, nor did I ever feel the need to know its origin. It was what it was, plain and simple. The cake she had baked did not turn out according to Hoyle. Asked why she had not gone shopping, she would say, “Things just didn’t go according to Hoyle.” This was only one of mom’s expressions that I never had reason to challenge but simply accepted. It turns out there were others that would prove to be malapropism time bombs waiting to explode at an embarrassing, inopportune moment, after I had left home.

Point in case, I grew up hearing her say, when referring to just letting something be, “You know what they say, ‘Don’t uset the apricot.’” I used the expression while out with a group of my peers. There was a sudden pause in the conversation, at once followed by an outburst of laughter. What made it so funny, one confessed, was that I had said it with such a straight face. My universe and self-confidence shattered before my eyes all at once, having discovered in that college study group, the correct phrase is “apple cart!”  Ha, and to think that I had needlessly harbored an unexplainable fear of apricots since childhood.

My mom also told me to put my laundry away in my Chester drawers. Once I had misplaced my wallet, she said she found it in the laundry basket in my jeans pocket and placed it on top of my Chester drawers. Okay, Chester drawers it is, and Chester drawers it stayed through college and on into the military. It was not until marriage that I learned from a very amused new bride that that infamous piece of furniture in our bedroom was in fact a “chest of drawers.”

This same mother would insist I wear an extra layer of clothing on frigid wintry mornings before heading off to catch the school bus. She emphatically stressed the importance of the added layer because of the windshield factor. Mothers know best, right? I don’tdo not recall exactly where, but I’mI am sure it involved some kind of personal humiliation, when I, with horror and shame, had the news broken to me by somesome stranger, that the term was actually “windchill.”

Now in my golden years, I’ve more than ample time to ponder life, to reflect upon my past, to embrace my acquired eccentricities, and investigate the esoteric side of my childhood. So, don’t anybody move! I’ve got a smart phone with Google Search, and I know how to use it! Getting back to mom and Hoyle…  

While writing this reflection, I took a moment to a Google search “according to Hoyle.” Had mom been correct in using that expression? What exactly did it mean? I had to know. Turns out, it is not only an expression, but also a book. In fact, it's is a whole collection of books by a conglomerate of authors written over a couple of centuries, on the rules associated with the playing of hundreds of card games.

According to Wikipedia, English writer, Edmund Hoyle (1672-1769), had been the originator with his manuscript on the rules of playing Whist, a popular card game of his time. He sold the rights to his manuscript for a pittance. It seems that since then, a multitude of people have capitalized from the surname, Hoyle, which has garnered great notoriety, but little in the way of fortune for him and his family. I guess he didn’t play his cards right.

Well, what do you know? Live and learn. Mom, whether she knew it, or gave a care, had been correctly using “according to Hoyle.” Thinking back on all those years of fearing my upsetting a piece of fruit, never questioning putting my clothes away in some other guy’s drawers, or fending off a certain frozen death due to some mysterious factor related to windshields, mom taught me much about life. First, to always do what is right and to play by the rules. And although success at the game of life depended much upon the draw of the cards, I should always strive to make the best out of whatever hand I’m dealt. Lastly, no matter how hard I try, or how well I do, I can always count on something, somehow, somewhere, not going according to Hoyle.

Playing cards.