Tonight, I was playing Uno with friends. We played the rule where if you don’t have a card to play on your turn, you have to draw until you can go. We were using a very old deck and the cards were quite soft and difficult to shuffle. One of the players drew three skips and then four reverses, all in the wrong color and all in one hand. Our one game of Uno lasted over an hour and we had to recycle the discard pile five times over. But we were laughing and having fun regardless of the fact that no one was winning.
It got me thinking about the joy of playing board games and card games throughout my life. I grew up without a TV in the home and never played a video game until college. Turns out I’m terrible at video games and really don’t enjoy them very much. In fact, the only one I ever liked was an old Nintendo game called Kirby’s Avalanche. It was a puzzle game. The games I have on my phone are more of the same. Very few graphics, mostly just logic needed to win like Sudoku and Brain Power.
But the games that really make me happy are the ones you sit down and play with your friends; no technology needed. I love Settlers of Catan, Uno, Phase 10, Tenzi, Qwirkle, Yahtzee, Spoons, Pit, Chinese checkers, and Farkle. Scrabble is my favorite. One of my favorite memories ever is the time I beat my mom at Scrabble. I doubt she would even remember it but I was so proud because my mom is very good at Scrabble. She’s the one who got me into the habit of playing solo games and keeping score in a notebook to see how I improve or not. I also keep notes about individual games: my highest scoring word, how much of the board I utilized, etc… Reading back, there was one game in 2014 that I had to quit before I finished because I was exclusively in the top left corner of the board and couldn’t figure out a way to expand. In my notebook I ask the question “could Mom have found a way out?”
I grew up in a family that played a lot of board games and card games. I miss always having someone to play with and love when I can get my friends to play. The ones my age (30’s) are pretty much exclusively in the video game/VR world and don’t really enjoy my games, unfortunately. But my older friends, the ones in their 50’s and 60’s are always down for a game night. I do get quite competitive and have to remind myself, it’s just a game. After all, I want people to continue wanting to play with me. I had a friend in high school that would get so mad when she was losing that she’d flip the board over or throw the cards across the room. We didn’t play together very often.
I remember many a night staying up late playing games with family and friends that would get quite rambunctious—especially Pit. It’s a card game where you call out cards you want to trade in order to complete a hand. Goodness, you always end up yelling by the end. And when you have 8 people sitting around a table, it can get very loud. I also remember a game of monopoly that lasted 8 hours. By the time we were nearing the end, I was ready to lose and be done with it.
Tonight, Uno wasn’t quite the high stakes Pit can be, but it was so much fun to have a night of simple fun with my friends. I need a healthy outlet when my life starts to feel stressful and chaotic. Games help with that. They remind me to just stop and enjoy a moment. Live in joy for a bit and let everything else go. It’s okay. And that game of Uno tonight, after 73 minutes, we finally had a winner. Victory was mine and it was sweet.
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