July 6, 2011

Money

Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon 1973

I really, really like board games.

One of my sweetest memories from childhood is that of playing Monopoly with my parents.  Both of them, together.  Because they were still married. And we were a family.  I also cherish the memories of playing Sorry! with my mom.  And card games - oh, the card games....  Speed and Russian Bank were my favorites.  I do remember my mom teaching me Crazy Eights, which seemed easy and sorta fun.


I own 21 decks of cards - all the variations of canasta I play require a good 10 decks.  The rest are extras for playing Nerts, a gangland style of Solitaire.  It's pretty hardcore, folks.  When I see new packs of cards at garage sales, I cannot resist.  It is not a problem.  Yet. 

This is my favorite set of cards - they are good, quality cards and have ruined me for cheap cards.  I have had these cards forever, they were a present from my Aunt Blenda.  

I told Arun the other day that I think he is finally ready for Crazy Eights.  He can already play Uno and they are essentially the same game anyway.  He is SO excited to play with the beautiful deck of cards that are normally forbidden to him.


We started playing Monopoly Jr. over the weekend.  Simple strategy, addition, subtraction and multiplication.  And the games are quick - about 30 minutes a piece.  What's not to love about that?

Well, I suppose losing is not fun.

Yes, winning is infinitely more fun.

Let's move on to the game of Sorry!  Basically like Parcheesi, but easier.
More American, less Indian?

Gentle Reader, I'm in heaven here. We have also started playing Blokus, which is AWESOME.  I am ready to dig out Payday next. And! I cannot wait to bust out the cribbage board.  Or show him my gorgeous, hand-made backgammon board with Bakelite pieces.

Hurry up little boy. Hurry up.

Well, maybe you should not grow up too much.  Once you head to college, who will play games with me?





4 comments:

stephanie said...

I LOVE board games. I do not have quite as extensive a collection as you, but that is only because I do not have the space for it. :-)

We have Sorry! Yup, even though there is no one under the age of 30 living in our household. There is a variation that came in our box's instructions where instead of drawing cards from the deck, each player holds five cards and you strategize how to play them. It allows you to be much more evil in sending the other places back to start.

Monopoly was one game that I never really could get into because the games always seemed to take sooooo loooong. It was my best friend's favorite game, though, so we ended up playing it all the time while watching a bad movie on TV.

LL said...

I LOVE board games. LOVE them. A highlight of my parenting so far has been teaching Landon Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, and Memory. I can't wait to move on to monopoly jr (one of my very favorites as a kid), sorry, and scattegories. I can only get JP to play with me so often...

Marathon Mom said...

I still have my decks of cards from Aunt Blenda, too. And Blokus, I've been eyeballing that game for a while now. Sounds like it might be worth picking up?

Sara said...

We LOVE Blokus! His cousin introduced it to us...I almost bought the travel edition for our last flight!