Not all fun and games
Bryce Casselman, Staff Writer
I’ve spent a lot of time lately playing games with family. And even though kinfolk are important, I’m not sure that playing games with them is really the answer. Gaming in my family is more a freak show than good, clean fun.
Let me try and explain.
First there is me. I’m the habitual pile-straightener. I am the one who keeps the table clear of any foreign objects and the play in good form.
Just let a card try to slip out of a right angle when I’m around.
I had to buy the more expensive version of Scrabble, where the letters all lock into place, because I simply could no longer be held responsible for all of those evil little crooked wooden letter-pieces.
My wife, on the other hand, cannot be bothered with such trivial tasks; she is so competitive that you’d think her eternal soul is on the line if she loses at Monopoly.
I have found it hard to try to teach my 4-year-old daughter that winning isn’t everything when my wife is shooting flames out her nostrils and chanting evil spells on me when I’m beating her at a game.
Then there is my sister-in-law. She’s 18 and tends to laugh like a chimpanzee when she starts winning a game.
It starts as a little giggle and then goes into full primate by the time we’ve reached the “seven-cards-of-one-color” phase in Phase 10.
Then, of course, my other daughter, 2-years-old, feels that she needs to be involved by taste-testing any detachable piece and then returning it with added saliva.
So let me complete the picture I’ve been trying to paint for you.
It’s Saturday night and we are sitting at the kitchen table playing a nice game of Clue. I, of course, am tidying up the weapons in the middle of the Clue board and making sure the cards have been evenly dealt to one and all.
My wife has a complex series of formulas she is calculating on her pad every time someone reveals a card to another player.
My sister-in-law has figured out who did it, where and with what by the fourth round and is laughing so hard; she starts to peel a banana with her feet and grooming everyone around her.
And to top it off, I have to perform the Heimlich maneuver on my daughter to get Colonel Mustard unstuck from his trip into her esophagus.
Oh yes, this is fun.
If your gaming experiences sound similar to mine in any way, I would suggest getting a deck of cards, barricading yourself in a room by yourself and playing a nice, quiet game of Solitaire.
Just make sure you keep the piles straight and at right angles.
Bryce Casselman’s column runs every two weeks in the Encore section. E-mail him with comments at yanobi@hotmail.com