What I Did For Love #4: Lied to My Son about “Gold Maid”

This is the fourth installment of a series called “What I Did For Love.” It takes its title from a song featured in the Broadway musical A Chorus Line. It’s also been the theme of the first two Oldster Variety Hours. Ophira Eisenberg performed a version of this story at the second event at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan on March 4th, 2026.

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A whisper before my son could read, he was gifted a kids’ set of four decks of playing cards, all with cute cartoon illustrations on them: one with a variety of smiling fish for Go Fish!, another with dancing numbers for Crazy 8s, pairs of zoo animals for a matching game, and Old Maid.

Old. Maid.

Wow.

How has this game just made it through the ages?

“How do you play again?” you ask? Well, you gather pairs by taking cards from your opponent’s hand, and whoever ends up with the Old Maid card at the end LOSES.

Dating back to the Victorian era, this tabletop amusement reinforced the social rules of the time; that women should marry while they were young, otherwise they’d risk ending up old, single, and as worthless as an iPhone 4. I say “of the time,” but I think we can agree that right now is the same time.

How has this game not been modernized or changed to something else you don’t want to get stuck with? Call it Messy Roommate, Crypto-enthusiast, Elon Musk! There are so many possibilities. Or, if you’re going to stay the course with blatant sexism, call it Career Woman or Lady Who Says ‘Her Body Her Choice.’ Then leave that poor girl alone to play solitaire in peace.

But no, it’s just Old Maid…sold to children.

Dating back to the Victorian era, this tabletop amusement reinforced the social rules of the time; that women should marry while they were young, otherwise they’d risk ending up old, single, and as worthless as an iPhone 4. I say “of the time,” but I think we can agree that right now is the same time.

My son and I sit on the living room rug, looking at the different decks, and he of course wants to know how each game works. I linger on the intricacies of Crazy 8s too long because I don’t want to explain the rules of Old Maid and put it in his head that the big takeaway is that an older woman is the worst card you can be dealt. I tuck the pack under my knee and continue to talk about other games, but my thoughts are elsewhere as the guilt floods in. Although I do have a partner, I had my son late in life. I am an older mother, and at times I feel terrible about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I wanted this child, and I still can’t believe it happened. Society is so damn mean to older women, except when you get pregnant. Then, for a brief moment you are a hero. Sure, you will be considered high-risk, asked to take a million tests, pressured to schedule a caesarian, and generally considered a medical problem—but also a miracle and super-vessel!

Every woman over 30 who is thinking of trying to get pregnant will pull you aside and ask how you did it, what your secret was, hoping to replicate whatever cocktail of medical intervention and witchcraft you doused yourself in. I can’t tell you the number of times I was asked, “How long were you trying?”

I’d answer, “I think it was 5 or 6 minutes? I remember Game of Thrones was on pause….and then the magic happened.”

But once you have the kid, you’ll be ignored, judged, and told to keep up.

I got pregnant at 42. My OBGYN would say, “So young for a New York mom!” But that’s just cute talk because, at 54 now, I notice how much younger all the parents around me are. At school pick up, I look at the other moms. They complain that they are sleep deprived, but their skin glows and is elastic—it still snaps back. They talk about having angst. It hasn’t yet crossed over into defeat.

I don’t want to explain the rules of Old Maid and put it in my son’s head that the big takeaway is that an older woman is the worst card you can be dealt. I tuck the pack under my knee and continue to talk about other games, but my thoughts are elsewhere as the guilt floods in. Although I do have a partner, I had my son late in life. I am an older mother, and at times I feel terrible about it.

When we talk, I’m afraid to throw out references that reveal my age—how I remember when they introduced Elmo on Sesame Street, and I didn’t like him. I only recently learned that the brontosaurus is back, as I didn’t even know it had gone away! I just got rid of my 90s grunge wide-leg pants and corset tops, only to see them come back. I’ll never don a corset top again. I’m not interested in being bound and cinched like I used to be. I dumb down my history, memories, and even my experiences so I can hide among these parents who had their kid at “the right time.”. And I wonder if my son notices that I am older and if he will be anxious about it. Because I am. And I was.

My mother also had me older, at 42, but I’m the youngest of six kids. The mistake! That’s what my older brothers and sisters always called me, “the mistake.” I remember asking my mom if I was a mistake and she shot back, “Don’t be ridiculous! You all were mistakes!”

It’s evident in hindsight that she had superhuman energy for her age and also wasn’t as strict with me as she was with my older siblings, presumably because of age-related fatigue, so I profited with very few rules. But as soon as I could do arithmetic, I would sit in my room and work out the difference in our ages like an amateur actuary—how old she would be when I was 30, how old she would be when I was 40, how old she would be when I was 50…

And I don’t want my son to be worried about it.

Watch Ophira Eisenberg tell a version of this story onstage at the March 4th Oldster Variety Hour at Joe’s Pub:

But here I am with Old Maid staring me in the face. Literally. My son grabs the deck from under my knee, rifles through it, and finds the Old Maid card, which has a cartoon image of a woman with brown hair wearing a bright yellow dress. He shoves it in my face and exclaims, “Mom! Mom! She looks like you!”

Cool.

“What’s this game called?” he asks.

I mutter, “Old Maid.”

“Gold Maid?!” he repeats while gazing at the cartoon lady in her marigold gown.

I half-smile and just agree. “Yeah, it’s called Gold Maid.”

“How do you play?” he asks.

Society is so damn mean to older women, except when you get pregnant. Then, for a brief moment you are a hero. Sure, you will be considered high-risk, asked to take a million tests, pressured to schedule a caesarian, and generally considered a medical problem—but also a miracle and super-vessel!

My brain reels as I try to invent a different way to play the game and change the narrative. I cautiously explain that we take cards from each other’s hands, try to make pairs, but whoever ends up with the Gold Maid card at the end…

“Wins?!!” he yells with huge bright eyes.

How can I deny the solution to this game that he effortlessly hands me?

And so, like a good improviser, I accept his brilliant solution. “Yeah. That’s exactly it. You try to make pairs and whoever ends up with that card, Gold Maid, at the end WINS!”

“Let’s play!” he commands with glee.

I start dealing out the cards thinking, “I think we already are.”

Ophira Eisenberg is a Standup Comedian, Writer, and Podcast Host (NPR, CBS, The Moth, HBO, Comedy Central, iHeart) who headlines theaters and comedy venues across the world, tours regularly with the Moth Mainstage, and hosts the weekly parenting-comedy podcast Parenting is a Joke (Webby Finalist for Best Host). For nine years also hosted NPR’s trivia comedy show Ask Me Another. Her breakout memoir Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy has been optioned for a television series, and her solo show Leaving A Mark: A Comedy About Scars won Women in the Arts & Media Award for Solo Show Scripts.

Eisenberg’s new comedy special, I Used To Be Nicer, produced by Lewis Black/Stark Raving Black Productions, is available now on Veeps. It will be premiering on Amazon Prime on Sept 22nd. You can also get the Album—listen to it on Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc.

Until midnight tonight, Oldster’s 5th birthday, you can still save 25% on an annual paid subscription.