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Ever played board games with your children? Candyland? Trouble? How about card games (e.g., memory games or matching games)?
You think that simply punching that center bubble on the Trouble board and causing the die to jump- telling you how many spaces to move your piece- would make for a simple and quick game. But no! How about Candyland? You appear, one moment, to be vaulting ahead along that candy-strewn trail towards the finish line, and then-- it happens. You pick a card that sends you BACK TO THE BEGINNING. These board games, like croquet, function by artificially boosting your sense of hope and optimism, only to dash it all to smithereens as you are catapulted in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION, away from the goal post! In the game of Trouble, that fabled children's classic, as soon as you get a "six" to get out of the starting gate, you get your wily five year old LANDING on one of your other men - the man that is, no doubt, CLOSEST to the finish line - and BAM! Your back in the penalty box - AGAIN. Then, for about your next FIFTY turns, you desparately try to get another "six" - the "get out of jail free" card of the Trouble-set. No luck. You are friggin' stuck at starting line, while your young child gaffaws and roars with laughter. "I've just got the giggles," she says, positively spitting with convulsive laughter. FINALLY! You roll that long-awaited "six" and you are on your way, all the while looking at your watch (wondering when the DAMNED game is going to end so you can watch the "Bold and the Beautiful" which you dutifully tape each afternoon so you can watch it when - IF!- your child goes to sleep). Suddenly, your kid has three of her four men in her home plate, with the final - WINNING - piece rounding the corner towards the finish line. WHEW! you think to yourself. She will roll that necessary "two" to make it into the home stretch, and the game will - BLESSEDLY - be over. FORGET ABOUT IT! It is YOUR turn and you are two spaces BEHIND your daughter's LAST piece. PLEASE GOD! Don't let me roll a two (because then your will land ON YOUR DAUGHTER'S PIECE and she will have to be sent to the starting line again and the GAME WILL NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, END! Go To Page: 1 2
The copyright of the article The Games Children Play- and play- and play--and..... in Motherless Mothering is owned by Jody Hart Lehrer. Permission to republish The Games Children Play- and play- and play--and..... in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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