I'm not done beginning, yet
July 17, 2006
Yesterday was a terrific day. . . just the kind I desire. All four of us were home (an increasingly rare event and one which seems to require Manhattan-project-like planning) and most of the day was spent together.
We played Monopoly. I've always loved Monopoly. I loved it even when I played games with my father (and generally my sister as well). He insisted on playing the "short game." You can find some gibberish about a short game in the Official Rules of Monopoly, but I've always been so fundamentally hurt by the very idea of the notion of artificially cutting short any kind of game (it's kind of like playing baseball without third base) that I haven't read them.
My father's means to a short game was to start out by dealing out the cards out, one at a time, and then playing from there. This did have one small advantage -- in that it meant that everyone started out with an even number of properties. But it also eliminated an awful lot of the strategy from the game. He was always the big boat, I generally took the dog (sometimes the thimble), and that tells you a lot about how I felt playing games with my father (short versions or not).
Ben, meanwhile, has gotten the idea that it's a bad thing to artificially inflate the economy, and thus extend the game, by allowing money for jail fees, luxury taxes, etc., to go under Free Parking, and then be collected when someone lands on that square. It is clear in the Official Rules of Monopoly, that this is disallowed. But I do not believe there are any Parker Brothers Police around to enforce this (and even if they did, it would only be $50 to get out of jail). And I kind of like the idea that even in a hopeless state, with no houses, no hotels, and a puny pile of cash on the table, you can always land on Free Parking and wind up with enough money to buy yourself back into the game.
Nonetheless, the game was fun. Sandy appears to have some kind of genius for Monopoly. I like to think that it's because she plays just the way I do, except that other players (most notably Katherine and Ben) are suspicious of every deal I propose, while Sandy continues to glide stealthily under their radar screens, while snookering them all the way.
On the other hand, maybe there's no truth to the preceding paragraph, but it's a way for me to have lost the game, and still come out feeling like I've had some kind of success.
Before I close out for the day, I wanted to extend a bit on my first posting in which I explained the background of the photograph of Seth G. Haley.
You'll note that there also appears, a little to the left of Seth G. Haley, a fragment of a picture of a building. This building is West Haven High School. Benjamin, who designed this page, decided that it was artistically clever to have it appear that the High School was sinking into the ground (or maybe that wasn't his intention, but simply my Rorschach-test-like way of reacting to it). Either way, it kind of gives me pleasure, because there are few places on the face of the earth (with the possible exception of my junior high school) that I would have wished could have sunk beneath the surface to meet some kind of permanent geothermic fate.
Tomorrow, time permitting, I intend to write a little about high school.
Yesterday was a terrific day. . . just the kind I desire. All four of us were home (an increasingly rare event and one which seems to require Manhattan-project-like planning) and most of the day was spent together.
We played Monopoly. I've always loved Monopoly. I loved it even when I played games with my father (and generally my sister as well). He insisted on playing the "short game." You can find some gibberish about a short game in the Official Rules of Monopoly, but I've always been so fundamentally hurt by the very idea of the notion of artificially cutting short any kind of game (it's kind of like playing baseball without third base) that I haven't read them.
My father's means to a short game was to start out by dealing out the cards out, one at a time, and then playing from there. This did have one small advantage -- in that it meant that everyone started out with an even number of properties. But it also eliminated an awful lot of the strategy from the game. He was always the big boat, I generally took the dog (sometimes the thimble), and that tells you a lot about how I felt playing games with my father (short versions or not).
Ben, meanwhile, has gotten the idea that it's a bad thing to artificially inflate the economy, and thus extend the game, by allowing money for jail fees, luxury taxes, etc., to go under Free Parking, and then be collected when someone lands on that square. It is clear in the Official Rules of Monopoly, that this is disallowed. But I do not believe there are any Parker Brothers Police around to enforce this (and even if they did, it would only be $50 to get out of jail). And I kind of like the idea that even in a hopeless state, with no houses, no hotels, and a puny pile of cash on the table, you can always land on Free Parking and wind up with enough money to buy yourself back into the game.
Nonetheless, the game was fun. Sandy appears to have some kind of genius for Monopoly. I like to think that it's because she plays just the way I do, except that other players (most notably Katherine and Ben) are suspicious of every deal I propose, while Sandy continues to glide stealthily under their radar screens, while snookering them all the way.
On the other hand, maybe there's no truth to the preceding paragraph, but it's a way for me to have lost the game, and still come out feeling like I've had some kind of success.
Before I close out for the day, I wanted to extend a bit on my first posting in which I explained the background of the photograph of Seth G. Haley.
You'll note that there also appears, a little to the left of Seth G. Haley, a fragment of a picture of a building. This building is West Haven High School. Benjamin, who designed this page, decided that it was artistically clever to have it appear that the High School was sinking into the ground (or maybe that wasn't his intention, but simply my Rorschach-test-like way of reacting to it). Either way, it kind of gives me pleasure, because there are few places on the face of the earth (with the possible exception of my junior high school) that I would have wished could have sunk beneath the surface to meet some kind of permanent geothermic fate.
Tomorrow, time permitting, I intend to write a little about high school.
posted by Ben's Dad | 12:15 PM
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