A Note on Games

Yesterday was Monday, so I went to the chemo barn.

My friend, Chris, has been taking me to the protein days, and having her along makes it a fun afternoon. Last week, we tried sitting at the game table in order to play Scrabble, but the position of my port doesn't allow for sitting upright. I have to stay in a recliner, reclined.

Yesterday, I brought my Cribbage board and taught the game to Chris. She humored me. And caught on quickly. And before we knew it, my box was beeping the "All Done" signal.

I love Cribbage. Don't you? What's that? You don't know how to play? Well, get on it!

While on the subject of games, I need to tell you about our weekend's garage sale Find. Namely, The Game of Life. Mint condition. $2.

That's a lot to pay for a garage sale game, you're saying. Surely you could have bargained it down to a dollar, Amy. Right?

Well I wasn't even going to try, that's how much I wanted it.

Because it was The Game of Life, old school. The kind Janice and I played at the McKellar's house when we were young. You know this game: First, you land on a space that designates your profession, and the ideal was the lawyer or doctor space, because they payed the most. And if you ended up as a teacher or, God help you, a journalist, then you wanted to land on the "do over" space so you could get a new profession, hopefully one that would pay more.

From there, you moved your car along the road of life. There were a few choices about which prong of the fork in the road to take. The way to determine which route was to count up how many "Have a child" spaces were ahead of you. The more, the better, because that increased your odds of landing on one, getting a little pink or blue peg for your car, and continuing on in Life with that child.

Why did you want so many kids? Why did you want to be the player who had to use a second car just to tote them around???

Because in the end, you would trade them in for money.

And in the Game of Life, she with the most money at the end wins.

I love this game. Only Americans would invent it. And then play it as a family. I love the big, multi-colored spinner in the middle, and how you have to have just the right touch to make it whiz around instead of skidding to a pre-mature stop.

I love that the worst thing to befall a player has to do with buying an uncle's skunk farm, which turns out to be a bad investment. Recently, I've come to appreciate also how no one ever lands on the "You Beat the Odds and developed a rare-er form of cancer at an improbably young age; if you have insurance, skip 3 turns, if you don't have insurance, skip 3 turns and pay $140,000!" space. (FYI: The military provides awesome insurance.)

And I love the box cover. Featuring the photograph--not illustration--of a Mom, Dad, son and daughter, all immaculately dressed and groomed in 1983 fashion, having the time of their lives playing this game.

But something tragic happened to Life a few years ago--something worse than being stuck with a skunk farm: They "updated" it. I've played this new version. It includes real estate choices, and "life experience" cards that are really just huge chunks of money that ultimately always decide the winner, regardless of how "well" he played the rest.

I can't stand the new version. It creates the illusion that the Game of Life (the game, not life itself) is more than just chance. That it requires several good choices to make. Old School Game of Life was all about chance, and that's why it was so carefree. Should we really be burdening 8-year-olds with the decision of whether to rent or buy a home? Especially when the Game of Life rules don't mimic, at all, the decision in real life, so it's not like we could even think of it as good, common sense training?

Well. The point is, I like Old School Life. And now I own it. And I look forward to playing it with our kids in about 3 years.