Games

Those who know me know that I love playing games. Now, I somehow earned a bad reputation for being a poor loser. I would like to say that this is categorically untrue. I do have memories of crying when I lost, but not since I was in grade school. The more accurate statement is to say that I am a poor winner. As much as I try, I can not keep certain things from coming out of my mouth. I believe some would refer to this as "trash talking." I am competitive, but I try to not let that impede from others' enjoyment of the games. Again, I am sure there are those who would disagree with me on this point. And perhaps this is why I seldom can find people to play games with me. . .I will self-reflect on this at a later point.

As I was saying, I love games and so it is with great joy that I see my sons coming to the age that they can play games with me. I started acquiring certain card games when Dom was two. Suffice it to say, the only game we ever played with these cards was some variation on 52 card pick-up. The variation being the number of cards.

However, nearly a year ago we received the game "Zingo" from my sister's family. At first, I thought this game would suffer the same fate of all children's games before it. Some half-hearted attempts to play the real way, then variations on 52 card pick-up (this particular game comes with several hard plastic tokens), and then eventually I would put it high-up in a closet to hide until that time that I would either throw it away due to the loss of playing pieces, or I would donate it. Imagine my surprise and pleasure when I see Eric get it out and the boys can actually play it. Not only can they play it, they can play it with little or no help from us. It's a game of Bingo only the cards have pictures on them instead of numbers and letters. It was a lot of fun. And I learned something about both boys while playing it. I was both proud and (to be honest) a little horrified when we played it the first time and Dom eagerly said "We All Won!" (we had played until every square on every card was filled). There was no way I would have ever rejoiced in everyone "winning". For me there is a winner and a loser. If you come in second, you are the first loser (thank you Mr. Seinfeld). Will, on the other hand, always wants to beat me. There was one game in particular where he threw a tantrum after I had won. (I don't believe in throwing a game, though I will slow down my response time if I know Will is actually paying attention). It was after this particular incident that I heard myself saying the sentence:

"You can't cry when I beat you." Yup, it still sounds bad.

I Spy Go Fish is the favorite game at the moment. William plays with all of his cards facing up. It took him a while to understand he had to ask for something that was already in his hand. And definitely not something that you had facing up in front of you. Dom has picked up the strategy to the game pretty quickly. He will even try to help Will by telling him which cards to ask for, though he is more apt to take advantage of the fact he can see all of Will's cards. The first time Molly truly crawled was an attempt to get at the draw pile.

We also have Dominoes, Toy Story Yahtzee, and Sagaland in the rotation of games. I cannot wait to introduce them to cribbage and bridge, but that will come later. For now, I have a Go Fish hand waiting for me.