The Game of Life

Last night, our game of Penn Stateopoly turned disastrous. After Ben went to bed, Tom and I decided to have a date night. Last time we played a board game, it was Trivial Pursuit (my choice--did I mention I won?), so he chose Penn Stateopoly.

The game got off to a promising start, and I finally had a monopoly with Pattee Library and Old Main (aka Park Place and Boardwalk). But then Tom constructed hotels on his formerly pathetic properties (the dark purple and light blue ones). Suddenly, the game turned grim, and I just wanted to stay in the safety of jail for as long as possible. When I landed on one of the dreaded properties with a hotel on it, I burst into tears.

Some background information: We've gone back on a budget this month, and I've been obsessing over grocery money and Christmas presents. It felt awful to have my husband playing against me and extracting rent I couldn't pay.

I also hate games that take forever to lose. In Monopoly, you have a pretty good sense that things are going wrong, but you still have to go through selling back hotels and houses and mortgaging your property, until you have absolutely nothing left. Why people thought this was a good game to play during the Depression is beyond me.

Tom and I realized a long time ago the difference in our personalities: I am a Boggle player, and he is a Scrabble player. I like fast-paced games that restart periodically; he does better with slower games that reward a few brilliant plays. I feel like I should be good at Scrabble--after all, words are supposed to be my specialty--but watching Tom ponder his letters and then put down a long, consonant-y word feels like torture. In Monopoly, I hate having to acquire properties, build on them, and win or lose through attrition.

I think my favorite game would have to be Taboo. At Thanksgiving, when my cousins come to my parents' house, we usually have a big Taboo game after dinner. For those of you not familiar with the game, you're given a word (say, "bird") that you must describe without using a list of other words (such as fly, nest, egg, or pigeon) so that the people on your team can guess it. Usually the game devolves into a free-for-all; my grandmother is awful at fast-paced games, and Aunt Cindy refuses to play on a team and just calls out answers if she guesses them. Taboo is the kind of game my family does best: fast and boisterous, with some spirited debate about the rules.

It's interesting to see how people react to competition. I'm okay (if grouchy) as long as things keep moving, but I hate the feeling of losing and not being able to do anything about it. Tom can't stand it if he thinks people are bending the rules. My friend Kaela hates competition in general, and in particular any competition with me involved, and she usually outright refuses to play games with me. (But maybe at New Year's, right? I promise, no crying... or maybe we can just do a puzzle.) My mom pretends not to be competitive, but if you get her deeply involved in a game she starts playing for the kill. My brother Trey used to be a frustrated-board-dumper, but he outgrew that.

And it's only a few years until Ben starts in with Memory and Candyland.... We'll have to see what kind of a game-player he turns out to be. Let's just hope he doesn't like Monopoly.