The Games We Didn’t Play

The other night, after the kids were in bed, Julie and I decided to play a game. We then went through the list of possibilities:

Ticket to Ride: One of my personal favorites. Julie shot it down; we played it together once and Julie decided the 2-player version was not fun.

Sequence: This time we both agreed that the 2-player version left a lot to be desired.

UNO, Rook, or other card games: No. Not in the mood.

Yahtzee: Maybe, but it’s probably too noisy and we would soon have a five player game, in stead of two player, so not tonight.


Rummikub: It’s a dumb name. That and the fact that every time Julie & I play this game, it ends in an argument. It’s always the same argument too, but I can’t remember the exact details. It has something to do with substituting a tile in your hand for a wild or something like that. Then Julie accuses me of taking liberties with the rules, I open the rule book and demonstrate exactly why my move is complex, but perfectly legal. She compares it to all of the complex, but “legal” moves at Enron, AIG, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and every other failed, corrupt institution. I compare her views to obtuse regulators that like to kill patients in order to stop the spread of a non-communicable disease. She says I’m in Banking and know nothing about disease. I try to explain that I was speaking metaphorically and that it means that there isn’t a financial problem that regulators can’t make worse. She says I’m in Banking and know nothing about metaphors. I explain that regulators are a necessary evil, but more evil than necessary. She says that’s irrelevant.

It never ends well.

We haven’t played the game in six years. We nearly had an argument about what the Rummikub argument was about. If Julie reads this post, she will undoubtedly say that our arguments never went anything like that and point out that if we haven’t had this argument in six years, than the entire diatribe about regulators, Lehman, Enron & metaphors could never have happened. We agreed to never mention Rummikub again.

Chocolate-opoly: I don’t like this one, so I didn’t even mention it.

Every Other Game in our Closet: Need more people, not in the mood, etc.


Boggle: I always bring this one up last, because it’s the game we always play. I get the big words, Julie gets the little words. The tattered, formerly-paper-backed Merriam-Webster settles all disputes. I have at least one long, quasi-word in each round. Julie always finds a few extra onomatopoeic words of dubious quality. I suppose “dit” is a word, referring to the non-dash part of Morse code, but it’s a lesser word. If we can demote Pluto to “dwarf planet” status, surely words like “dit” can be demoted to midget-words. They would no longer count in games like Boggle and Scrabble, and would be ineligible for crosswords. They could be in dictionaries with proper footnotes, like they have for “ain’t,” that let all users know that these words are really midget-words and are only included for completeness.

By this time Julie was into her second game of Cash Cow 2 on the Webkinz site and just responded with a u-huh to every thing I said. I laid down on the bed, waiting for her to finish so we could play, *sigh*, Boggle.

An hour later, I woke up when Julie asked me if I can remember the password to one of the on-line bill pay sites. I mumbled incoherently about midget-words and metaphors. Then I drifted off again, thinking of all the games we didn’t play.