Last night, at around nine p.m., the phone rang. It was my friend Scott, inviting me over to play Monopoly. (I run with a wild crowd.) Hub was busy, so I went by myself. It was tremendous fun; I hadn’t played Monopoly in years, mostly because I always lose.

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to play Monopoly. Our set had carved wooden game pieces; the first time I saw the metal iron, dog, etc, I thought maybe their REAL Monopoly markers had been lost and replaced with silly little dollhouse toys. Monopoly taught us how to count and deal with money, make change, win, and LOSE. If someone was a poor loser, uh oh. That wasn’t tolerated in our house, nor should it be in anybody’s house, or anybody’s school, either.

Never in my life had I ever won a game of Monopoly. My parents played to win, and cut us little kids no slack. Why should they? That wouldn’t have taught us a thing. As I grew up, I still never won. In college, I never won. When Hub and I would play Monopoly with friends, I never won. I was always the first one out: the one the other players took pity on with little loans of fifty and a hundred dollars.

But I was never the winner. Ever. Come to think of it, I’m seldom the winner when it comes to board games; my small children even beat me at Candy Land, and I was trying!

I never won at Old Maid, or Animal Rummy. I still seldom win at Scrabble, and it’s one of my favorite games; I’m too impatient with slow-moving games to do well.

But last night my losing Monopoly streak ended, for I ended up, somehow, with Boardwalk and Park Place right at the beginning, and I managed to use them to collect most of the properties on the board, including, thanks to a piece of backfiring strategy by my host, who I hope is still my friend, all four railroads.

First one forced out was my host’s young son, and while I know that his dad felt bad about the boy losing so early on and so thoroughly, I am used to playing with kids and if kids want to really learn to play a game, they’ll play by the rules and not expect any coddling. This applies to all aspects of life, by the way. So out he went and his property went to others and we played on until another player landed on. . . Boardwalk. I got all of his possessions, including his self-esteem. 🙂 (Thanks for the stuff, Joel.)

Then it was Scott and me, one on one, head to head, each determined to ruin the other in true Monopoly tradition. Thanks to those railroads, he didn’t have a chance.

I ended up with stacks of cash INCHES tall, and as I looked at them I suddenly became nine years old again and the only thing I could think of was. . . Man, I wish that was real money.

I’m not nine any more, but I still wish that was real money.

After the game was over, we played Scrabble, and everybody got their revenge on me. I just don’t do well with slow-moving games. But I still like them. Losing ain’t all that bad, you know. I mean, the loser still got to play, didn’t he I?

Mamacita, Scheiss Weekly