For someone who grew up in a family of card players, I don't play a lot of card games

Image downloaded from Wikipedia. By J Wynia from Minneapolis, United States - Afternoon cribbage on the patio., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102255562

When I was a kid, any time we held a Tennant family reunion, my dad would inevitably end up at a table with some combination of his brothers (he had a bunch of them) playing a game called Oh Hell.

Oh Hell was/is one of the large genre of trick-taking card games in which you look at your hand and decide how many "tricks" you can take based on the strength of your cards. In that sense, I think it's a lot like Euchre or Whist.

I never understand the game when I was little, but even I could see how much fun the brothers would have playing, talking, making fun of one another, and generally enjoying each other's company.

When he wasn't playing Oh Hell, my dad would sit in our kitchen for hours on end playing solitaire. As I've mentioned before, the sound of Dad shuffling the cards on a Saturday morning was in some ways the soundtrack of my youth.

It's not that I dislike card games – far from it – but I don't think I got the card playing gene. I'm not a poker guy, and I've never once played any sort of card-based table game in a casino.

We do play cribbage in our family, though, which I like a lot. I don't win all that often, but it's fun. If you don't know cribbage, it's the game pictured in the image at the top of today's post.

When my kids were little, I also played a lot of War and Go Fish with them.

And that's about it. I never learned Gin Rummy, Pinochle, Bridge, Hearts, Spades or any of the countless other games of which Americans (particularly of my generation and before) seem to be so fond. Or if I did learn any of them, I don't remember.

I have a feeling card games may eventually go the way of the horse and buggy, or at least "manual" card games will. Digital versions are likely to live on on our phones and other devices.

But even I (a playing card dabbler at best) know there's no cyber equivalent of a freshly opened pack of cards dealt around a table of friends and family intent on beating one another...and loving one another just the same.

The attraction of violence and war to some non-violent men (like me)

I have two interests that surprise a lot of people who know me, or who at least think they know me:

(1) War

(2) Combat sports

The second of those is somewhat sentimental in origin in that it was my dad who taught me about boxing and how to appreciate it. He watched the Friday Night Fights religiously, and when I watched with him, I was always amazed at how accurately he could predict the outcome based solely on the first few seconds of a bout.

I still catch a boxing match on TV every once in a while, and when I do, I think of the things he taught me about what separates good fighters from also-rans.

My interest in military history is more self-generated, though my dad did serve in the post-World War II U.S. Army and later the Army Air Corps. While my main interest is World War I, it's really the psychology of all war that draws me in.

For what it's worth  – and admittedly it's likely not worth that much, given my lack of personal experience on both fronts  – my theory is that most men overestimate how well they would do in a hand-to-hand street fight and underestimate how brave they would be in combat.

Because that's what I believe attracts many guys to study war and to follow violent sports: the question of how you yourself would do if thrown into those situations.

If a guy came up to me on the street and started swinging, could I defend myself? If I was called to run into machine gun fire and try to take a trench 400 yards away, as the soldiers of World War I were often commanded to do, would I have the guts to do it? If I was challenged to a scrap by a bigger guy in the middle of a hockey game, would I be willing to stand in there and trade punches?

That, I find, is what many men want to know when it comes to these subjects. How did others react, and would I be able to do the same (or to avoid their mistakes)?

By the way, I'm referencing only men here because (a) I am one, and I can really only relate to my own gender when it comes to these questions, and (b) The wars I study most closely all happened decades or even centuries ago, when 99.9% of the combatants were male. I fully realize there are highly skilled female boxers and women in all branches of the military who take part in combat now. But what little understanding I have of these questions derives fully from a man's perspective.

I think it's important here to acknowledge some hard truths:

• War and violence in general are stupid. They are ugly and vulgar and should be avoided in all but extreme cases.
• Boxing and ultimate fighting are problematic. They have the potential to cause devastating long-term neurological and other damage, and in some cases even death. I don't disagree with those who see combat sports as barbaric.
• Street fights are incredibly dumb, driven as they usually are by fragile male egos, unrestrained machismo, and quite often, alcohol.

Yet at the same time, I find the following also to be true:

• There is a certain degree of nobility in the soldier who picks up a rifle and defends not only his foxhole buddies but also the nation standing behind him.
• To a far lesser extent, there is something to be admired in the hockey fighter who comes to the aid of a teammate, standing up for someone on the ice who cannot stand up for himself.
• No matter how "enlightened" I think I am about violence, the world is full of lunkheads who don't have the brain cells required to think through these questions, and who will start throwing punches at the slightest provocation. As a Christian, I am called to turn the other cheek in these situations, but as a male, the unfortunate reality is that I am probably not going to back down. I am going to fight back.

There is dichotomy in all of this. I will continue to study war despite its ugliness, and I still condone fighting in hockey and the sport of boxing despite the issues associated with both.

I'm not a fan of spontaneous street fights, but I know they will continue to happen for reasons that are as old as time.

The eternal question of "why," and the primal inclination of many men toward violent behavior, are puzzles that neither I nor anyone else is ever likely to solve. All the same, I can't stop myself looking for the answers within myself and from others.

Why I hate war but love reading about it

If you're someone who flies with any regularity, try this:

The next time you're sitting in the gate area waiting to board a plane, look around at what everyone else is reading. And specifically, look at what the middle-aged males are reading. Three-quarters of the time, if they're reading a book rather than a newspaper, it's going to be some sort of nonfiction history. And most of the time, that means military history.

As a group, we guys in our 40s and 50s LOVE us some military history. The Civil War is a big one. Lots and lots of Civil War books to be seen at airports. Many of these readers, I've noticed from their accents, are southern. Which means for them, they're not "Civil War" books at all, but rather "War of Northern Aggression" books. No event in American history has been debated, discussed and generally dissected more than the Civil War, especially among those who are still fighting it for one reason or another.

You'll also see a lot of guys with books on World War II. There's a more direct connection there, since many of our fathers and grandfathers actually fought in "Dubya-Dubya Two," as Archie Bunker always called it. A lot of men can picture themselves as GIs slogging it out at Guadalcanal or fighting the Germans in the Battle of the Bulge.

Which I think is sort of the point. I believe one of the main attractions of military history for men of my generation (or maybe any generation) is that they see war as a manly, virtuous thing. When you sit at a desk all day, there can be a part of you that longs to do something macho. And what's more macho than carrying a rifle and killing foreigners?

My war of choice is World War I. At last count, I had read, cover to cover, 25 to 30 different books related to the First World War. I've done sermons at church that tie into it, and I genuinely want a membership to the Great War Society (yes, there is such a thing).

But if you have any compassion at all, to be a student of World War I necessarily means that you are anti-war. No one with a shred of decency can read about the slaughter of millions of young men on the battlefields of France and Russia and think that war is anything but vulgar.

And yet I'm fascinated by it. When I read about trench warfare and what it was like to go "over the top" with 60 to 80 pounds of gear on your back into heavy machine gun fire and poison gas shells, I invariably try and put myself into that situation. I wonder if I would have had what it took to attack knowing the odds of my survival were slim. Knowing that a single bullet to the gut could mean a slow and painful death in No Man's Land. I want to see how I would measure up.

Because that's how we guys are raised, you understand. It's always about passing tests and showing you're tough and all of that. Some boys are smart enough to avoid that stuff and seem to understand their inherent self-worth without having to prove it by fighting.

I didn't get into many fights myself, but I still did pretty much whatever anyone dared me to do. I guess I felt better about myself when I passed whatever "test" was put in front of me. Many times, the "test" was something stupid and dangerous. And I still did it. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The point is, part of my fascination with war is wondering how I would handle it. And at the same time, I feel incredibly blessed that I've never had to find out. Nor would I ever want my sons to experience it. When it comes to All Things Soldier, I walk a fine line between obsession and repulsion.

When I used to hang around airports, I often wondered if the guys reading those war books were thinking the same thing I was. If they were wondering, "Oh sure, I can write up a memo and do a sales forecast, but how would I react if a 6-foot-4 German came at me with a bayonet? Would I be man enough to handle it?"

Such a strange and pointless way of thinking, I know. What does it matter? If my boys are going to wonder about their manhood, I would rather they ask themselves how they would handle their anger in an argument with their girlfriend or wife. Or how they would react to the sorts of moral and ethical dilemmas that define who we really are. I would rather they ask how tough they are in spirit rather than in fist.

But still, I have to admit, whenever I read one of my Great War books, I always end up mentally putting myself in those filthy, stinking trenches. And the answer to how I would perform in battle really matters to me. I wish it didn't, but it does. I have a sinking suspicion it always will.