EVERY DAY IS GAME DAY
The wife and I play a game every morning now that I’m a retired sort. (I did write ‘sort’ didn’t I? My cellphone sometimes interjects different words than what I intend; I thought it may have put in ‘sot’, despite its accuracy.) We flip a Sacacawea dollar coin to determine what kind of game; heads for a board game or tails for a card game.
If it’s a board game, heads determines the game is Rummikub; tails means the game is Scrabble.
If it’s a card game, heads determine it’s King’s Corner. Tails mean it’s one of three card games: Thirteen, Tic, or Five Crowns; subsequent flips determine which.
We’ve been doing this each morning for a number of years, just like clockwork, often even away from home, just to get a little time together, although we’re not always ‘friends’ by the end of it, as we both can get a little growly when competition rears its gnarly head and tempers flare.
We used to play Scrabble as No-Holds Barred Squabble, but I couldn’t bear the abuse, and so declared a truce until we had resolved a few sore points. In an attempt to head problems off at the beginning, we begin each tournament with a smile and friendly hug before initiating combat, thus signaling a sincere effort toward lessening of hostilities. Sometimes it works.
Our games include a consolation game for the loser, this usually being Crazy 8’s or whatever game the loser determines, given time allowed. If it’s a rainy day or a Sunday, we may play several games until we both tire of Jackie winning all of them . . . Okay, she may let me win one or two. (I exaggerate.)(Not.) It’s just that I’m not as bloodthirsty/competitive as she is.
First of all, I don’t have any real strategy for it. I just go on what’s in front of me, use what I’m dealt and so forth; hope to get what I need; listen to what she’s complaining about having or not having, and try to avoid or being scammed by her constant stream of verbal information as I suspect she’s probably lying to me anyway. Sometimes I win--and sometimes I don’t, but I don’t take it to bed with me. It’s just a game; who cares?
Non-card games like Life, Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Charades, and Sorry, never turned my crank, (so goes the expression). I’m sure there are boxes of them here somewhere, (as we never throw anything away), and the wife has been a grandparent figure longer than I have been. These games came with her, as sort of an ‘accessories package’, which was great should one of her grandchildren ever stop by and ask to play one, but to-date, the only time being is when we go to Stony Point Resort at Cass Lake, over Labor Day, and the ‘kids’ are trapped in their cabins.
Family members have gifted us non-card games, like Banana, Upwords, Trivial Pursuit, and Pictionary, which are appreciated but soon given over to accumulating dust along the baseboards because we struggle with 21st century jargon.
Thinking along those very lines that elders, such as ourselves, need to keep our brains active with something other than remembering to take our medications and charting bowel movements, the other day we decided to try a different board game to re-energize our brain appendages and we picked Pictionary, the 8+-year old version. Perfect!
There were little cards that each featured symbols to describe objects including stick people, lightning bolts, cross-hatches, and the all important set of parallel wavy lines . . . WTH?
And then there were cards with adult questions on one side and kid questions on the other side; we soon disposed of the symbol cards, at my wife’s suggestion, opted to start drawing our own pictures.
Then we tried the kid questions first, finally resorting to the adult questions, well at least the ones we had any hope at all to understanding.
The thing is, we’re not stupid, just not TV oriented. I mean, how do you draw a picture of Beavis and Butthead? Then there was West Wing. Using those symbol cards would’ve been impossible; much less trying to draw pictures good enough that one or the other of us could guess even remotely close to what it was we meant.
And then there’s that thing about how women think and how men think; two different worlds there, we know, and is definitely obvious in Pictionary with every card. ARGH! Except it does contribute a great deal of hilarity to the morning.
Example: Back to the Future. I sketched the courthouse, the clock tower, lightning, the time-machine car speeding toward the theater up the block . . . and even with all that detail, she couldn’t guess it. What? Then I had Wife Swap. Oh yeah . . . WTH? So I drew a man between two women with another man on the other side . . . She couldn’t guess that either! Are you for real?
Classically, she drew fast simple images with remote suggestions of what she had to describe, uh West Wing, as I mentioned was a bird with its wings spread along side compass directions of E & W! Hell was a circle head with horns with wavy lines beneath it! Salon was a stick figure that looked like a person holding two smoking pistols, one in each hand.
“C’mon! What’s this stuff?” I may have said, imploringly.
But we’ll be tackling Pictionary again soon anyway. We feel our brain appendages enlarging.
The wife and I play a game every morning now that I’m a retired sort. (I did write ‘sort’ didn’t I? My cellphone sometimes interjects different words than what I intend; I thought it may have put in ‘sot’, despite its accuracy.) We flip a Sacacawea dollar coin to determine what kind of game; heads for a board game or tails for a card game.
If it’s a board game, heads determines the game is Rummikub; tails means the game is Scrabble.
If it’s a card game, heads determine it’s King’s Corner. Tails mean it’s one of three card games: Thirteen, Tic, or Five Crowns; subsequent flips determine which.
We’ve been doing this each morning for a number of years, just like clockwork, often even away from home, just to get a little time together, although we’re not always ‘friends’ by the end of it, as we both can get a little growly when competition rears its gnarly head and tempers flare.
We used to play Scrabble as No-Holds Barred Squabble, but I couldn’t bear the abuse, and so declared a truce until we had resolved a few sore points. In an attempt to head problems off at the beginning, we begin each tournament with a smile and friendly hug before initiating combat, thus signaling a sincere effort toward lessening of hostilities. Sometimes it works.
Our games include a consolation game for the loser, this usually being Crazy 8’s or whatever game the loser determines, given time allowed. If it’s a rainy day or a Sunday, we may play several games until we both tire of Jackie winning all of them . . . Okay, she may let me win one or two. (I exaggerate.)(Not.) It’s just that I’m not as bloodthirsty/competitive as she is.
First of all, I don’t have any real strategy for it. I just go on what’s in front of me, use what I’m dealt and so forth; hope to get what I need; listen to what she’s complaining about having or not having, and try to avoid or being scammed by her constant stream of verbal information as I suspect she’s probably lying to me anyway. Sometimes I win--and sometimes I don’t, but I don’t take it to bed with me. It’s just a game; who cares?
Non-card games like Life, Monopoly, Battleship, Clue, Charades, and Sorry, never turned my crank, (so goes the expression). I’m sure there are boxes of them here somewhere, (as we never throw anything away), and the wife has been a grandparent figure longer than I have been. These games came with her, as sort of an ‘accessories package’, which was great should one of her grandchildren ever stop by and ask to play one, but to-date, the only time being is when we go to Stony Point Resort at Cass Lake, over Labor Day, and the ‘kids’ are trapped in their cabins.
Family members have gifted us non-card games, like Banana, Upwords, Trivial Pursuit, and Pictionary, which are appreciated but soon given over to accumulating dust along the baseboards because we struggle with 21st century jargon.
Thinking along those very lines that elders, such as ourselves, need to keep our brains active with something other than remembering to take our medications and charting bowel movements, the other day we decided to try a different board game to re-energize our brain appendages and we picked Pictionary, the 8+-year old version. Perfect!
There were little cards that each featured symbols to describe objects including stick people, lightning bolts, cross-hatches, and the all important set of parallel wavy lines . . . WTH?
And then there were cards with adult questions on one side and kid questions on the other side; we soon disposed of the symbol cards, at my wife’s suggestion, opted to start drawing our own pictures.
Then we tried the kid questions first, finally resorting to the adult questions, well at least the ones we had any hope at all to understanding.
The thing is, we’re not stupid, just not TV oriented. I mean, how do you draw a picture of Beavis and Butthead? Then there was West Wing. Using those symbol cards would’ve been impossible; much less trying to draw pictures good enough that one or the other of us could guess even remotely close to what it was we meant.
And then there’s that thing about how women think and how men think; two different worlds there, we know, and is definitely obvious in Pictionary with every card. ARGH! Except it does contribute a great deal of hilarity to the morning.
Example: Back to the Future. I sketched the courthouse, the clock tower, lightning, the time-machine car speeding toward the theater up the block . . . and even with all that detail, she couldn’t guess it. What? Then I had Wife Swap. Oh yeah . . . WTH? So I drew a man between two women with another man on the other side . . . She couldn’t guess that either! Are you for real?
Classically, she drew fast simple images with remote suggestions of what she had to describe, uh West Wing, as I mentioned was a bird with its wings spread along side compass directions of E & W! Hell was a circle head with horns with wavy lines beneath it! Salon was a stick figure that looked like a person holding two smoking pistols, one in each hand.
“C’mon! What’s this stuff?” I may have said, imploringly.
But we’ll be tackling Pictionary again soon anyway. We feel our brain appendages enlarging.
Your descriptions of "Game Day" are priceless. Domestic bliss? Friendly competition? Perhaps, but likely not. If nothing else, sounds good for those with low blood pressure. Ger 'er up!
ReplyDeleteAgreed on not being TV-oriented. We could be thinking about how to save our home world instead, eh?
Seems telling that family members are giving you games. Is there a meaning here?
I think you are on the right track when you mention "brain appendages enlarging." Even my M.D. says it's good for us up-and-coming elders.
JP Savage
LOL! I just love the fact you play everyday. :)
ReplyDeleteProbably the best post I have read! What fun!
ReplyDelete