Spring Awakening

One afternoon last week, I convinced a friend to accompany me to a restaurant in Brooklyn to learn how to play Hong Kong-style mahjong.I’d always been intrigued by mahjong’s colorful bakelite tiles, the satisfying clacking sound they make as they’re shuffled.

My mother plays the American version twice a week with the same groups of friends, a clubby ritual that makes me a little jealous: Why don’t I have a regular game of something going?We were a group of 15 or so students, all new to the game.To begin, we played a dummy round with all the tiles turned over so that everyone could see their values and the teacher could walk us through each step of gameplay: Here’s how you set up the table, building a wall of tiles.

Roll the dice to see which player gets to break the wall.These are the suit tiles, these are the honor tiles, the dragons, the winds.Mahjong’s not a cinch to learn.

Our teacher was excellent, repeating each step of the rules several times, asking us to repeat them back to him.There were whiffs of card games I knew, but I found the intricacies confusing: Wait, you need three identical tiles to form a pung? How did that guy just win the game when I was still working out how the flower tiles operate?And then: Why am I learning to play this game when I already know many other games and I do not ever play them? This was the thought that snagged me, that made me want to politely claim an emergency and walk out mid-lesson: Why am I doing this? Ostensibly, I’m a curious person, one who’s drawn to new experiences, who wants to expand her horizons, to multiply opportunities for fun.

Mahjong offers all of these things! But learning a new game is something I haven’t done in ages.It’s something kids (and their parents) do readily, but eventually, most of us stop.

The machinery for learning new things becomes creaky.It’s not easy or comfortable to get that old mainframe up and running again.

So many things in life are not easy or comfortable...