The Games We Play

I have always loved games even when I was a kid.  I remember playing jacks and pick up sticks with my oldest brother and my little girlfriends. You could even play all by yourself.  Jacks was my favorite.    

Of course, we all loved the outdoor games of Hop Scotch, Dodge Ball, Kick the Can, Baseball, Roller Skating, Bicycling, Volleyball, and Jump Rope. What kid didn’t?  All the kids in the neighborhood played together until our mothers called us in for one thing or another, which we tended to, and ran back outside again, not missing a beat.

But my favorites when I was growing up were games you could play with the adults like Monopoly, Clue, Checkers, Yahtzee, Scrabble, Canasta, Kings Corners, Gin Rummy, Password, etc.  As I got older, it was Charades, Rumikube, Perquacky, Tripoly, Tri-Ominoes, Mah Jong, Bridge, Sequence, and Mexican Train Dominoes. 

Dad’s cousin, Bill, introduced us to the detective game, Clue, when I was a kid, and we always looked forward to playing it when we went to Cousin Bill and Claire’s house in SF, not too far from our house.  Wow this was a cool game to try to guess who the murderer was, the type of weapon used, and the room where it occurred.  After gathering all the clues, you would say something like “I think it was Mr. Plum, in the Library, with the Candlestick” or was it “Miss Scarlett, in the Library with the Rope.”  The clues were the most important and remembering what the eliminations were could mean winning or losing the game.  I didn’t win often. I was not a good detective.

I think my favorite when I was a kid was Scrabble and I played that mostly with my Dad.  It was always a challenge to beat Dad.  He did not cut me any slack at all and I didn’t cut him any either, other than letting him look in the Scrabble Dictionary to make sure the two or three letter word was legal, as he went for his seven-letter word.  Dad was always on the quest for the seven-letter high scoring words and he was pretty good at it.  Luck was on his side but I was a good opponent.  We each won our share of games.  It is all in the luck of the draw.  I still love the game and sometimes play it on line. 

When the kids were very little (my son an infant, and my daughter just two) we lived in Vacaville for a year while the ex-husband was superintendent on a building project there. We rented a three bedroom condo that had a pool.  I played a game called Perquacky with my neighbor, also a mother of a small child aged three.  We hung out together at the pool on a daily basis, drinking our Harvey Walbangers. Once inside our condos, the game began.  It was a timed game with lettered cubes that you move around quickly to form four, five, and six letter words.  It made you really think as fast as you can to gain points.  I usually won but my friend was a good sport about it.

My folks made up a game and we called it the Dictionary Game that we played as adults.  We took turns being the one who picked out the word from the huge unabridged dictionary. The word was announced and if no one knew the meaning, that was the word chosen. The person who picked the word wrote down the meaning and everyone else would write down a bluff for the meaning. The person who picked the word collected all the bluffs and the correct answer and read them aloud. You got points for picking the correct meaning.  Some of the bluffs were really good which made picking the correct meaning not as easy as it sounds.

Once, on one of our “cruise buddies” cruises with my folks and aunt and uncle, we went from SF to Vancouver, BC via ship and checked into a nice hotel there.  Before going to dinner, we played Charades in Uncle Joe and Aunt Dottie’s room.  This is a game where you use physical rather than verbal language to convey the meaning of a word, song title, movie title, etc. to others.  Usually you play in teams, but when we played with this “cruise buddies” group of six, we all played as one team.  Bill and I still laugh about this one time when Uncle Joe was up and trying to give us clues as to his secret word. It was a movie title. Uncle Joe stood up and hid behind a wall.  Then the top half of his body popped out with bug eyes, mouth open wide, and hands in the air, then he hid again.  He kept repeating it until his time was up.  It was funny looking, but we were stumped.  The more he did it, the more we laughed, and almost peed our pants.  When time was up, we found out that Uncle Joe was trying to convey the name of the movie, Casper.  Our insides ached so much from laughing, we figured it was time to go to the cocktail lounge and soothe our insides with a drink-of-the-day.  It helped, but we were still laughing to the point of almost spitting out our drinks.  You had to be there.

My favorite game now is Mexican Train Dominoes and there have been many nights into mornings when we didn’t stop playing until we started dozing off.  My cousin, Charlotte, and her family plays with us in San Jose at their house.  Knowing that the game will keep us up to all hours in the morning, we usually stay overnight at their house when the game is on the agenda.  Their daughter and her husband also play with us, as do her classmates from Saint Mary’s college, and other friends.  It is thoroughly enjoyable.  Time gets away from you so quickly. There are no partners in this game so it is dog-eat-dog.  Husbands against wives, kids against parents, and friend against friend.  Unfortunately, the younger ones try to ply us with alcohol so it dulls our senses and let’s them get the upper hand.  Their Sangria goes down so smoothly you think you are drinking fruit punch and therein lies the problem. 

The last time we played, Bill and I ended up in last place.  It was not embarrassing enough to have such awful scores, so their daughter, Delina, had to send a photo of our score sheet, via cell phone, to her friend, Amanda, in LA who also plays with us when she is in town.  Now I ask you, is that any way to treat your elders???