Travel Game Set

Day 118: Travel Game Set

It's not even magnetized

There's no earthly reason why this travel game set should be so hard to give away. Most of the plastic game pieces are still in their little plastic bags, and the plastic cribbage board has never been opened. It's been lying unused in the game cupboard for years, along with Star Wars Trivial Pursuit, Simpsons Monopoly, Othello, Clue, two (yes two!) backgammon sets, a family game set (mancala included), an unopened 1,000 piece puzzle, an inlay cribbage board that my grandma and I used to play cribbage on, a dozen packs of cards, and a laminated presidential election game that Sam and I invented together when he was in fifth grade.

The only things in this cupboard that I really want to give away are the Star Wars Trivial Pursuit game and Simpsons Monopoly. Those concepts just don't go together in my mind. The rest I kind of want to keep. I might work the Thomas Kincaid landscape puzzle some day, after the kids leave for college. I might want to give one of those backgammon sets to Emma, when she gets her own apartment. Sam might want to play Othello with me. Not surprisingly, Sam does not want me to give any games away, consistent with his plan to prevent me from getting rid of his stuff so he can give his old toys to his own boy some day.

I remember when every winter evening was consumed with playing board games with Sam. Chess, backgammon, Monopoly, Crazy Eights, Chinese checkers, checkers, hangman, tic-tac-toe, Othello, Connect 4. His appetite for games, and company, was endless. Now he plays games with his friends remotely by iPhone. Or in person, at their houses. Although we do still play the occasional game of checkers, it is usually on my iPad. We never take the games out of the cupboard.

When we created the Presidential Election game - a sort of Chutes 'n' Ladders meets Trivial Pursuit - I was so proud I wanted to get it published. Sam was so self-effacing, he wouldn't even take it in to show his fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Pryce.

By the time I reach Day 300 of the stuff project, I'm sure those unopened playing cards will look a lot more expendable.

The Presidential Election game stays.

Forever.