Board Game Fever
November 15, 2011By admin
Our house-mounted antenna provided four channels plus Fox when the weather was clear. Still, my brother and I received Milton Bradley’s Channel Surfing board game one Christmas during our childhood. The gift giver must not have realized that cable television was necessary to play, so we had to pack the game for use in the hotel room on vacation.
That game aside, my parents’ choice to forgo multichannel satellite television at our farmhouse sparked a passion for board and card games for me. In fact, last year my daughter rummaged through the piano bench to discover one of my Christmas lists from the 1980s. Nearly half of my requests were for games, even though the shelf in my bedroom closet already resembled the game wall I marveled at Toys-R-Us. I couldn’t get enough.
As an adult, winter still brings on the desire to grab the dictionary for a competitive match of Scrabble on the living room floor.
Fortunately, most of my relatives also catch board game fever around the New Year. The only cure is to gather around the table for a glass of iced pop and leftover chocolate from our stockings to play a few tabletop matches.
In our family, the boxed entertainment possesses as much power to gather the group as a hot-and-hearty meal. I have always loved games for their ability to combat the post-holiday blues and encourage family laughter.
As an adult, I appreciate the time to temporarily forget about life’s stresses, unless I’m playing the Game of Life.
My family has owned and played the tabletop version of television games. We have tried board games that require artistic skill in sketching and molding clay, the brain-boggling trivia and word games, and plenty of four-point pitch, often the game of choice. In fact, the grandparents provide a crisp deck of casino playing cards in our stocking each year.
Most of the time, our teams divide into boys versus girls, regardless of age. Therefore, battle of the sexes seemed a brilliant idea. The men say we cheat, but we really do know such information as the true dimension of a 2×4 at the lumberyard.
And don’t get my aunt started on cheating. She claims the men use some form of third-base coach language when we play cards. Then, there was the time we knew my husband’s team had glanced at the opposing artist in Pictionary when he drew only a line on the paper and his team correctly guessed buffalo.
Even still, drawing a bad buffalo proves a healthier alternative to channel surfing most any day.
