A Gentleman's Game of Monopoly
On a rainy afternoon, or perhaps to fill in some time before dinner, my youngest son and I will sometimes play a game of Monopoly. We prefer the short, one-hour version. One of us will be the banker, the other will be in charge of the properties, we set the timer and begin. This is mostly consistent with any other time I’ve played Monopoly in my life, but we have evolved to engage in a more cordial, civilized version that differs from how this usually went down in the past.
I never had the stomach to be cutthroat while playing board games, which is why I always lost at them. I’m speaking mostly about the ones that employed strategy or required a ruthless determination to crush your opponent, or at least to wear them down through attrition. The patience involved in playing the long version of Monopoly or, God forbid, Risk, was something that I did not possess. I never saw the end of those games, I usually just lost quickly and went into the other room to watch cartoons or something. Then, I'd wait for the yelling and arguing to signal the exit of another player, who would come storming in complaining about how some jerk wouldn’t sell them a property or lend them some money. The game room would continue to empty into the T.V. room until all that remained were two former friends battling it out to win the favor of the Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley or whomever it was they were trying to impress.
Don’t get the idea that I never won any board games, however. If there was a “Pop-O-Matic” involved, I was the shit. Otherwise, I was hopeless. Being the youngest, I considered it a victory if they just let me be the top-hat. I must be the top-hat. The pieces of Monopoly were so cool – the houses, hotels, Chance and Community Chest cards, and especially the properties. I loved to handle the money too, albeit fleetingly.
After a lifetime of vicious board game tactics, I enjoy this new way of playing. My son knows that I prefer the orange, yellow, and red properties, so he won’t buy those when he lands on them. “Feel free to purchase those,” I’ll say. “No, no, you like them,” he will reply. We only battle over the railroads, which are the best properties to own, in my opinion. When the timer rings, we add up our cash and mortgage values and declare a winner. If the results are surprising to one of us, our monocle might pop off. Then we say, "Good show", and retire to the study where we pour a brandy and smoke a cigar or whatever it is that proper gentlemen do.
This is all in sharp contrast to the way we play indoor NERF basketball, however, where it is common that, at some point, one or both of us will go crashing through the closet doors chasing the ball. All of that pent-up aggression has to surface somewhere.
