from the May 20, 2010 issue of the County Journal...
You might already have heard about this, but let me tell my side of the story.
The kids and I played the card game UNO today. In 1971, some guy invented this game with no idea (I don’t think) of the consequences of his actions.
The game was brought into my home somewhere in the late 70’s and it would have been better if my parents had bought throwing knives or boxing gloves to bring us closer as a family.
The game was an out and out war. In my house, we played to win. Well, Mom didn’t play to win, she just played. The reason I never thought she played to win was that she rarely slammed down the draw four and yelled, “Ha! Draw Four Buddy!”
The rest of the people in the house (me included) played like the very existence of the planet depended on who won.
We played Scrabble the same way. You made sarcastic comments toward those who played slow, but certainly took your time when it was your turn. You challenged suspicious looking words. You hoarded “U”s so whoever got the “Q” had to eat it at the end. You never played in an area where the next player could use the triple word score.
We probably still would play this way if our board and letter tiles hadn’t been seized by the police as evidence.
We didn’t own a Risk game...who needed the game of global domination to vent your thirst for power when a game of checkers was a bloodbath?
I don’t know where the games are anymore, but wherever they are there are tear stains on our Monopoly Board, a cracked pop-o-matic, and blood on our Yahtzee scoresheets.
I guess we just love competition.
Darrell Teubner, Editor
