3 a.m. solitaire skirmish

SOMETIMES I wake up at night for no good reason and can’t go back to sleep. It isn’t nightmares that awaken me. I don’t have a lot of those. I just wake up, stare at the shadows on the ceiling for a while and then finally crawl out of bed.

I used to watch television in the wee hours, but I had to keep the sound so low that I couldn’t hear what was going on, and it’s no fun watching lips move when you’re not a lip-reader. I couldn’t just wander around like Banquo’s ghost, an eerie figure in underwear, so I turned to looking up stuff on the computer and answering e-mails. In the course of tinkering, I discovered electronic solitaire.

I played it as a kid with real cards when punishment or heavy rain kept me indoors, preventing me from stealing apples off of Hester Silva’s trees or shoplifting comic books at Birdie’s Five & Dime. I worked hard at solitaire back then, just as I do now, because I’m a competitor even when I’m up against an unseen force. I’ll do everything possible to win, except maybe pop steroids.

I realize that this brings up the question of cheating. But is it really cheating if one practices chicanery while playing a game that doesn’t involve an audience? I wrestled with the question and decided that it’s like the sound of a tree falling in a forest when there’s no one there to hear it. Cheating is only cheating when someone’s around to notice.

It all began the other night while I was sitting at the computer staring out at the moonlight and listening to a hoot owl. I noticed that my hand, which was on the computer mouse, had unconsciously guided the cursor to “program” on my desktop. Something ghostly had moved me there like a Ouija board pointer, so I clicked on it. The category “games” came up, and then “solitaire.”

I began playing and almost immediately became addicted. There was only one catch: The computer makes the rules and there’s no debating them. I realize that ignoring preestablished directives without a vote in Congress creates an ethical dilemma that each must face in his own way. I faced it and decided that the machine was being dictatorial.

Although cheating at solitaire is not guaranteed in the 1st Amendment, the right of free choice is involved. A piece of equipment has no moral authority to deprive me of my options. When a man is only trying to get sleepy again and not practicing for a major tournament, he ought to be allowed the satisfaction of winning so that, content with his efforts, he can toddle off to his dreams.

Especially irritating was the computer’s unwillingness to allow me to fill an empty space with a card other than a king. I began wondering who composed the rules that said I couldn’t use a queen or a jack? I clicked help and discovered that someone named Wes Cherry had developed the program for Microsoft. I thought about calling him, but I couldn’t imagine there were too many programmers up at 3 a.m., so I let it go.

I continued to play, losing regularly, a condition that, rather than lulling me into a somnambulant state, kept me tense and awake. This was not a good way to get sleepy. I tried developing a new attitude, telling myself that winning wasn’t everything, it was how you played the game, but decided that was a lot of garbage. I wanted to win. I compete even when I’m playing an entity without a soul, and I don’t mean Karl Rove.

I piled up a lot of losses while others told me they won all the time. In desperation, I turned to Zen and tried humming myself into an alpha state. That woke up Cinelli, who thought we had an infestation of bees. Hundreds of wasps built a nest in our yard once, and it got us so psyched out that even when the refrigerator hums, we think it’s a return of the wasps.

Still, well, Zen-ing, I tried a silent path to enlightenment by emptying my mind, which wasn’t hard to do, and I’ll be danged, as they used to say, if I didn’t win! Not just once but three times in a row. It was a spiritual experience, watching the cards do a whirly kind of dance with each victory. Now I win every so often, though not enough for international competition.

Unfortunately, winning has created a new obsession, which is to keep winning. I feel like Lance Armstrong at the Tour de France, pedaling uphill in a sweat, 1.5 seconds ahead of Ireland, Germany, Botswana and Bulgaria. Even bicycling on the Zen path toward nirvana doesn’t help anymore. Wes Cherry has me in his electronic grip.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. E-mail: al.martinez@latimes.com.