Seventy three years at the table, and still saving a seat.
Shelly has been playing American Mahjong for seventy three years. She learned as a child in the Catskills, in the Borscht Belt years, on cardboard tiles, because real tiles were expensive and scarce. Prim called her the living chain of custody for this game: every card the League has printed, every rule change, every joker era and the time before it. The history this letter traces, Shelly did not read about. She was in the room.
And she is still teaching. In April she taught a 2026 card class at Bespoke House of Mahjong in Carrollton, Texas, from a kind of pattern recognition no video, book or Facebook post can hold. Prim's advice to anyone within driving distance of Carrollton was plain: go, book a class, and bring a friend, or two.
Written from what the letter said. Read the letter for the whole of it.