Michael A Kazanjian
editor in chief
As we all know time is meant for one thing. Time is meant to be passed. It is a struggle that so many of us deal wit h on a daily basis. Nothing I can think of works as well as the tried and true board game.
Before you rush out to K.B. please take careful note of this article. You never truly know a person until you play them in a board game. I do not care if it is your father, mother, sister, girlfriend, boyfriend, dog, cat, fish, neighbor with the smelly house, whoever, by the end of the game your hands are set to strangle. It is okay, time is flying by.
What baffles me most about playing games is how often the rules change from the time the game starts until it ends. Everyone’s guilty of doing this, myself included. So why do the rules change so often? I will tell you why. We all want to win. By the time the Scrabble bag runs down to the last two letters you are as beaten down as a heavyweight who has gone the distance. It is a battle. It is a struggle. I must win. The sad thing is that I lose on a regular basis.
Scrabble can cause me to lose sleep. A few nights ago I was having a great game. I just used my Q and victory was nearly mine. But then the inevitable was about to occur. I reached into the bag to pull out my next set of letters, I looked and then the horror set in. In my possession I had, in the following order, J O O O O I I. It was over. Not just the game, but also my night. An hour and a half right down the drain. Perfect. Just as I intended.
Another time muncher is Trivial Pursuit. Now some people I know are very superstitious Pursuit players. The wedges have to placed in just the right order or it is unbalanced. If your wedges somehow fall out of your holder you might as well quit, the bad luck is overbearing. What puzzles me more than the game itself is the thought that some people actually know the answer to some of these questions. How many muscles does a dog use to move its ears? Unless you are a regular on Animal Planet I do not expect anyone to know that. But Trivial Pursuit takes longer to finish than Scrabble. Three hours you will never see again later and it is time for bed.
But what is the Mother of all time wasters? One word says it all: Monopoly. I have played this game a thousand times and I still have yet to finish a game. I have never even bought a hotel. I have passed GO more times than I would like to admit but I have never, ever finished. This is it. It is the king. If you have time to kill, Monopoly supplies the funeral, viewing and burial of time all in one. I am not saying it is a bad game, I am saying it takes more endurance than the guy who takes a cannonball to the stomach at carnivals. Six hours later and you are still not done. You have missed lunch and dinner trying to win and all you got was hungry. Let me sing your praises Monopoly, you can make time disappear like no other.
So there is my boring life. I have nothing better to do than pass the time by playing board games. Nothing better to do than tell you about playing board games. I am getting bored. Scrabble anyone?
