The Games We Play
One of my favorite rainy day memories is of playing board games or sometimes cards at the Heckes house here in Oysterville. I think it was usually the girls of the neighborhood who gathered around the big kitchen table and played Chutes and Ladders or Old Maid for hours at a time and ate cookies warm from the oven ‘foisted’ on us by Aunt Rye or Mrs. Kemmer.
I don’t remember much about the games, themselves, or about who won or who lost. For me, the only ‘only’ child in town, it was the getting together that was important. I loved the talking and the giggling and even the occasional disagreements among some of the siblings or cousins. The games we played were the least of it.
The only game I remember playing at home with my folks, at least when I was little, is Monopoly. It seems to me that the game was set up on the dining room table for days at a time and I think my dad always won. By the time I realized that it was a foregone conclusion that Mom and I would lose, I had lost interest.
About the time I was in high school, Canasta was the all the rage among my parents and their friends and, occasionally, I was asked to join the ‘fun.’ But, it wasn’t. And, in college when my friends stayed up late into the night playing bridge, I refused to learn how.
Amazingly, I did learn to play chess and almost enjoyed it. I was traveling on a freighter from Lisbon to Liverpool and we hit a huge storm in the Bay of Biscay. Only one other passenger – an old Irishman – and I kept our sea legs.
For about 36 hours, we were isolated in the lounge – our ten sick passenger-companions having rendered below-deck sleeping area too rank for habitation by anyone not at death’s door. Occasionally, a crew member, lashed to the ship by a long rope as I recall, brought us a meal from the galley. Otherwise… we played chess, he patiently teaching me beginning strategies in his gentle brogue and laughing reassuringly when a sudden lurch of the ship caused our chess pieces to plunge off the board.
Nyel and I played games for the first few years we were married – especially Trivial Pursuit which I remember finding fairly enjoyable. Cribbage? Not so much. Nyel says it’s because he’s a “sore winner.” True. He claims I’m better at chess than he is. I don’t remember… we’ve only played twice I think.
Last night, we were introduced to dominos. Nyel won with a score of 230 in just two hands (or do you call them rounds?) Our hosts said they have played hundreds of domino games through the years and had never seen the like. Beginner’s luck? I know they probably thought so…
We play a dominos game called Mexican train dominos. With a large group it can be quite fun, the object being to have the lowest score. As a child in New England, my mother taught us and played black jack with us when the weather was too cold or too stormy to play outside. We used poker chips for money and could play for hours. As with you, I don’t remember who did the winning, just the fun of playing together with my family.