As a child, I was deeply impressed by my father’s ability to shuffle.
When you can barely hold a deck of cards without dropping them, it is like magic to see someone split the deck and fold the two halves neatly into each other, first forward, then back, to re-form a whole. I can almost hear the sound as I write this; the rapid-fire rhythm followed by two quick taps to straighten the deck out.
Shuffle is not just a word for cards, though.
We shuffle when embarrassed or timid, or just physically unable to do more. Feet drag and knees barely move as we slowly make our way from here to there.
A “cabinet shuffle” is meant to sound like those exciting cards in the hands of a great magician, but too often the term sounds like an uneasy slide down a too-long corridor.
