Game On

I don't play games; this is just a thing about me. Oh, I play some games, but they are few and select and generally involve things I already know how to do and a minimum of competition.

This was a big issue when Thomas and I first started dating and I was inducted into the ranks of they who must play games at all times, aka his friends. The people we knew and hung out with played cards, they played drinking games, they played board games, they played Jenga. They played games loudly and with enthusiasm.

I didn't grow up playing a lot of games. My parents didn't teach me to play poker or hearts or rummy. In fact, once we were past the Chutes and Ladders/Candyland stages, I can remember only two games I ever played with my parents: Scattergories and Win, Lose or Draw. Also bear in mind that I didn't have my first beer until I was in college and safely 3 states away. So when I arrived at said college, I knew no drinking games and no card games. And I didn't find a great deal of opportunity to play Win, Lose or Draw.

So that's the first reason. I hate to be the person in the room who has to be taught to play, who can never remember the rules. I hate to have to have practice runs and slow everyone down. It's too much pressure.

And then the second thing is that I was once married to someone incredibly competitive, someone who once didn't speak to me for two days because my team beat his team at Mario Party. And so I don't like to win, and who likes to lose? So generally I find no enjoyment in the whole process.

However

There are some games SO FUN and low pressure and easy to understand that I love to play them and would do so all the time if anyone would play with me and these include

Taboo
Best word game ever. I have two copies, one that displays all the words in French on the underside of the cards, you know, just in case you want to up the stakes a little. I love this game because perfectly literate and polite people suddenly find, when playing this game, that they know no adjectives except dirty ones. Typical delivery of the person reading the card, "This is uh, This is uh, This is a fucking thing that you use when you're fucking...uh...in the car, fucking going someplace. SHIT!"

Apples to Apples
I played this for the first time last night. Thomas bought it because it sounded like something I would play. And boy was he RIGHT. In this game you're given a catagory and have to look in your hand to find the closest match. So maybe the category is "Chewy" and you have Goldie Hawn, Spit, Nuclear Power Plants, The 1960's, My Boyfriend, Grass, and Rednecks. You have decide which is the most chewy and play that card. Then the judge chooses whose card was best described by "Chewy." It is great fun. Wanna come over and play?