“We do not stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing!” — Benjamin Franklin.
Growing up, my father loved games. Cards, board games, dice, darts, you name it, we played it. On long car rides, since there were no DVD players or iPads, we’d play “States and Cities,” which meant he’d holler out the name of a state or city, and we had to come up with another state or city that began with the last letter of the place he’d named. Then there was license plate math, which I always lost. I am not the person you can rattle off six digits of a license plate to and say, “Ok, add this, subtract that, then multiply by two,” and expect anything but a blank stare.
As I got older, the games got more complex. Dad taught me how to play gin rummy, and at the end of the summer, we’d have a tournament to see who paid for school supplies. He bought the basics, but I always wanted more pens, scented markers, and the TrapperKeeper, so we’d play cards for who bought those. Yahtzee was a favorite, too. Sure, it meant more math, but the numbers were smaller, and I could mostly keep up. I’ve never won the lottery, but I imagine it’s like the thrill you get when you roll all five dice with the same number on them and get to yell “YAHTZEE!” at the top of your lungs.
At one point, I knew how to play backgammon, but I’ve forgotten. Checkers is easy enough, but chess never made any sense to me. A rook is a castle, a knight is a horse, and the bishop looks like a pepper grinder. How am I supposed to strategize which one of those is stronger than the others? A king and queen? Couldn’t the horse just run them over or something?
Board games were the saving grace of rainy summer days and the week I spent recovering from a tonsillectomy when I was ten. There are only so many hours of Bugs Bunny and Flinstones episodes you can handle, so getting to play Trouble or Life was a nice break. I loved the little plastic cars with the pink and blue pegs and the fact that you couldn’t lose the dice from the bubble of the Trouble game.
In college, I found my favorite board game ever: Trivial Pursuit. Two Canadians invented it, and I was in college in Vermont, so it hit there first. My father came up to visit, and I said, “You have to play this game with us; it’s crazy fun.” He dominated the game and crushed my friends and me, but he took us all out to dinner, so we didn’t mind that much. I’ve always loved it, so much that one of my side hustles now is as a trivia show host in pubs and restaurants.
Board games have come a long way since I was little. Now, instead of the basics of Clue, Monopoly, and Parcheesi, hundreds of games exist. Pro tip: If you play Cards Against Humanity with your grown children, you will need mind bleach and therapy. It’s been an interesting transition going from the games my kids liked when they were little, such as Hi Ho Cherrio and Chutes and Ladders, to games like “Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza” and “Slap and Slip” which honestly sound like someone just made up fake games, but they are real. I initially thought the game “Left, Right, Center” was a political trivia game; it’s actually a fast-paced way to make your family hate you, without even talking about politics.
The pandemic certainly brought back many favorites and introduced us to new games, and I hope families continue to connect with game nights. The other day, I sat down with a very young friend and played an old-school game of Connect Four. He was two, and he beat me fair and square. I know a lot of video gamers, and they love their Xbox, Playstation, and Switch games, but there’s something to be said for going old school with a rotating Scrabble board and some crunchy snacks.
Board games get us away from screens and engaged with family members and friends, and it shouldn’t take a global sickness to get us back to the table. Pull out a game sometime soon and see how much fun you have. I guarantee it will be a nice break from doomscrolling through social media.
Brenda Kelley Kim has lived in Marblehead for 50 years and is an author, freelance writer, and mother of three. Her column appears weekly.
