Dear Readers,
On March 30, 2020, my husband and I, at the onset of the pandemic, dusted off the Scrabble board and played the first of many (697, to be exact) nightly Scrabble games. The competition continues. To date, I have triumphed in 545 of those games. The bad news, however, is that this ongoing tournament has created a monster, and the monster is — me.
It’s important to note, I’d never been a competitive person before. Never. I did not participate in sports growing up, but while watching high school football games, I was known to break the Beach Boys’ commandment, “Be True to Your School Now,” by cheering for the losing team even if that losing team wasn’t MY team; I always felt bad for the underdogs.
Rooting for underdogs
When my own kids were in high school, they ran cross country, so I never had to choose sides; I was free to cheer for every struggling runner who made it across the finish line.
My grandsons are quite accomplished in youth wrestling but they regularly, much to their embarrassment, look up in the stands after winning a match to see me sobbing in sympathy for the little guy they’d just defeated.
But set me down in front of a Scrabble board, and well, I just don’t know what comes over me.
I HATE losing at Scrabble! Even the thought of losing at Scrabble keeps me awake at nights.
Maybe it’s not me; maybe it’s actually board games themselves that are sinister, unhealthy, dangerous. Maybe that’s the reason horror movies have titles such as The Games People Play, and maybe that’s why we scream, “Don’t play games with me!” when we’re arguing with someone.
Words from an expert
Time for professional help.
I spoke with Bryan Winter, owner of Middleton’s I’m Board! store where the only thing they sell, believe it or not, is not lumber but board games!
“Aside from the fact you’re very competitive playing it, is there anything else about Scrabble that causes you anxiety?” Bryan gently probed my subconscious after I asked if he recommended me going cold turkey and giving up Scrabble altogether.
“Well, it is very annoying to have to wait anywhere from five to 105 minutes for Dave to take his turn. And,” I confessed, “I do experience feelings of extreme anger and thoughts of mariticide when the official Scrabble dictionary allows him to score points with ridiculous ‘words’ such as ‘za’ (slang for pizza) or ‘kerf’ (the cut end of a felled tree).”
“Ah-ha!” cried Bryan, diagnosing the dilemma. “You don’t need to stop playing board games altogether; you just need to switch to a different game!”
Finding a new game
According to Bryan, until about 20 years ago, Americans believed board games were for kids only. Europeans of all ages were playing board games while in this country, adults played card games such as bridge and euchre and sheepshead, but dismissed board games as mere child’s play. And indeed, Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders were designed with the youngest gamers in mind.
Gradually, however, board games such as Monopoly and Clue came on the scene and American grown-ups began to turn to the boards.
The problem, however, with all those early versions of board games was (and is) that winning (and the object is always to win) relies mostly on pure luck, the random roll of the dice, or the haphazard chance of the Chance card. And to acerbate the problem, those games require too much “down” time for the player who isn’t “up”.
Half of the I’m Board! front window pays homage to the classic games of our youth – Battleship, Boggle, and Mouse Trap are prominently displayed and still sell quite well. But the other half of the store’s front end is dedicated to the new generation of games which, taking a clue from online gaming, feature much less downtime.
They’re less about luck and more about “resource management,” as Bryan describes it, and they involve a more fast-paced, continual interaction with the board.
The biggest sellers in this category are without a doubt the new classics — Catan and Ticket to Ride.
Bryan explained the rules of both new classics and I could see how they would be healthier than Scrabble for me. But although Ticket to Ride is about the ride, not the destination, and it’s about enjoying the game without worrying about who wins, it requires an awful lot of concentration and hard work. After much discussion and discernment (thank you for all your help and expertise, Bryan!), I selected and brought home a “new” board game.
And the game we went for was . . .
This game is a quick game to play, multiple players can emerge victorious, and luck is not involved. Instead, it involves a skill gained from the vast amount of medical knowledge people our age have acquired in living long lives and seeing doctors on an increasingly frequent basis.
The game board features a whimsical cartoon fellow in his birthday suit with multiple small recesses lined with electrically-wired sides (batteries not included) and containing small plastic replicas of his various organs. The object of the game is to “surgically” remove each organ with a pair of metal tweezers without triggering a loud buzzer by touching the sides of the recesses with your tweezers.
“The game is afoot!” Dave and I will be playing our first game of Operation tonight, dear readers; I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Linda E. Kelly is a member of Blessed Sacrament Parish in Madison.