Day 119
There are two things I have learned about in the past two days: cheating and Christmas mail.
I had the pleasure of playing a game of Sorry! and my personal fav, The Game of Life. While bringing back fond memories of my childhood spent slurping Kool Aid and staying indoors with television, books and the occasional board game. But all that crap is folklore of the ages what is important is what's being lived today. Well, in this case what was lived in yesterday. Yesterday I learned that playing these games as an adult isn't so much about having a good old bonding time (come on, did this ever happen like the pics on board game boxes with the happy brunette families) but more so about creating your own personal jollies through cheating.
Here are some tips I'd like to share:
When playing Sorry! it is pretty hard to cheat, except by:
-Keeping quiet when a player doesn't see a move. (classic yet unreliable cheating tactic)
-Volunteering to move another players piece for them and neglecting to move it all of the required spaces (pro-active approach). Note: You will usually get caught so if you can pull this off know that it is either a big victory or you are playing with idiot 4 year olds who cannot count properly.
When playing The Game of Life there is a series of steps the elaborate cheater can take to assure winning but more so for the thrill of getting away with it. Here are my tips:
1. Play with your mother.
2. Volunteer to be the banker. Don't wait for a response, just start taking charge you are less likely to be stopped.
3. When a player lands on your mother's stock numbers give her a 5,000 bill with confidence. She will never look down to her stock card right in front of her to realize that it should be 10,000.
4. When your mother passes a Pay Day and doesn't notice, don't pay her.
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 throughout the game.
6. When your mother gets to the Millionaire Estates offer to exchange her small bills for larger ones so as to make it easier for her to count them. And finally;
7. Give her less money than she had in her pile when doling out large bills, careful to put her small ones directly into the bank piles so she cannot deny that you are being honest.
The above provides the ultimate in cheating satisfaction and is not recommended for the weak of heart or the plain nice. If you are at all concerned with winning or losing games then you should probably re-assess your value system. It's not who wins that is important it's what you can get away with. That's the game of life.
I wonder when they are going to update The Game of Life. And in the new version are they going to make getting married an option not a mandate? Are you going they going to put a condo in the House Deed cards? Or replace Travel Agent as a career with Software Developer? Instead of making the choice between college or start a career will the players have to decide whether to only get a 4 year degree or an advanced degree? Will they somehow replace the old school station wagon cars with mini vans or SUVs? Will they keep the Salary Cards the same? Why is it that you get the full years salary every time you just pass a Pay Day? Perhaps I need to whip off a letter to whomever owns Milton Bradley these days outlining my concerns and offering options for updating. I would but really my only main concern is when and if they do update the game (who knows they may have already) my only request is that they keep the Superstar Career Card but slap Paris Hilton's face on it. With my luck the creator of Life would be dead.
My mother and I were sitting around the table tonight, me with a glass of beer and, her with a pile of letters. Instead of having the stack consist of half-paid bills it was filled with envelopes with handwritten to and from addresses and half-paid bills. This is Christmas mail. Christmas mail can come in several forms such as a Christmas card with a personal message (the best and most rare) or what is most common and popular are the traditional Christmas photo and/or the Christmas Letter.
The Christmas picture sheet with boring holiday wishes used to be a big deal as it would take much time and preparation (choosing matching outfits, driving to Sears and driving back to Sears to pick up the prints) but now anyone with a computer can make and usually print a decent picture card so they are as abundant as people hitting deer with their cars in the Midwest. The only difference is that there is a hunting season to thin out the deer population not so with the photo card senders. Usually everyone looks older than last year and if there are tiny children they look adorable. If you are lucky enough to receive a photo card from a family with teenagers you are in for a special treat as they have two look options: slutty or zitty. Both are equally entertaining. In any case how is sending off someone a cheezy, posed picture of yourself in anyway a gift?
My personal favorite is the Christmas letter. There are so many varieties of Christmas letter. The three that stuck out from my mother's stockpile (before she threw them away) were written by an ancient great grandmother, a young, new grandparent, and a woman who has lived alone for years but still has a daughter nearby. Looking at the three letters the great grandmother's was the best because it displayed her unique voice with little metaphors laced with quilting details (plus who can really be annoyed by a great grandmother who can still type, or even knows how to type). The younger, new grandmother gushed about her grandkid and mentioned her and her husband's and her mother's lives like boring character descriptions, most likely copied from last year's letter only changing the illness of her mother to accommodate this year's ailment.
In a lot of ways my favorite letter was the one penned by the woman who lives alone. The first section was observations about the weather. The second section was about how the enclosed card was made from a close up photo she took of her cacti. Note: We did not receive this card. She listed the fun things she'd done all year. There were six. It must have been a good year. And finally, on the last few lines she writes where her daughter works and how she has her own apartment now and then she gives out the address to her daughter's new apartment for an unexplained reason. Perhaps so that her daughter could receive our Christmas photo or letter. If we had one.
After perusing these letters I learned a few things, like typos could be expected such as: "Jim is has a new tractor." or "breath taking" (two words) or four dot ellipsis. There are random 3rd person tense shifts when the narrator is writing about what they themselves did over the past year as though the entire family was really writing it. I also learned that people who live in the Midwest really do like to go to Branson (the book "I Love Ranch Dressing: And Other Stuff White Midwesterners Like" was right). I learned that if you get your name handwritten on the top on one of these typed Christmas letters then you are extra special. Sometimes if you are extra, extra special the sender will write something like this (actual message on one of my mother's received letters), "Hope you and family are doing okay. I think about you." I learned a good many things about how people have spent their past year. But, I've mostly learned that these people actually think I care. They think I care so much that they sat down and wrote a Christmas letter and xeroxed it and sent it out to 30 people knowing in their hearts that doing this was cheaper than buying Christmas cards (even if you bought them by the box on clearance).
Go green tip: Do not bother printing out and sending off your Christmas letter, nobody cares and if you are lucky enough to have anyone that does give a shit that you went to the International Harvestor's Collector Conference don't they deserve more than a generic letter?
In other exciting news a cougar is roaming around different residential neighborhoods not the fun 40-something female WASP preying on High School boys but the eat-your-dog kind. This was shown on the ten o'clock news accompanied by pics and video footage of the vicious Lion King extra. How much of a redneck am I showing when I say, "You can shoot film of this creature but not shoot a shotgun?"
-Canadian (U.S.) Castaway
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