Game night

You’d think that, with all of us locked in a house day and night, it wouldn’t be that hard to get the four of us to sit around a table and play a board game. But it’s Friday afternoon as I type this and we’ve been trying to organize one since Saturday.

Life intervenes, of course. Plans for a weekend game had to be rethought after a social studies project that was due on Monday was suddenly remembered after breakfast on Sunday. While I wouldn’t say that either Christina or I are slaves to our jobs, unexpected deadlines and projects do pop up, meaning the after-work game session can’t happen on this day or that because some parent is suddenly stuck working until almost bedtime. Sometimes you’re just glad when the kids are engrossed in some project that doesn’t involve maiming one another, so you forget that you’ve been advocating for game night for the last 96 hours and just sit down on the sofa and enjoy the quiet.

But there is a philosophical clash here as well, and it’s primarily between me and Emma. I like complicated games, where you have to sit and thin two to three steps into the future. Emma is certainly capable of these games – she usually wins – but she’s more of a Uno kind of gal.

It’s not that I hate Uno. It’s just that, if I’m going to get the family seated together in front of a board game, I want to actually do something together. I want to talk and exchange ideas and actually be together, not play a 15-minute round of shouting “Draw 4” and “You forgot to say Uno” before we all go our own ways. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of fun, but it’s more like a starburst. I want the slow version where we talk about whether you really want to build your settlement there and reach pinky swears where I won’t wipe you out this time if you leave me alone next time. I want an actual family.

It’s becoming clear to me that my desire to get everyone down for one of the harder games is turning into a bit of a power play. I keep threatening to shut down all electronics in the household if we don’t play a game I like. Emma is fond of remembering chores or schoolwork when the other option is to play one of my games. It’s almost like a game to her, it feels, finding ways to get out of game night. And me, I’m having flashbacks to a summer where my brother forced me to play backgammon every night for what felt like three solid months and beat me every time (like, whoo hoo, Mr College Student, taking apart the second grader at backgammon!) and I hated it, so I don’t want force this king of thing on my kids either.

So I cheated a little. I pulled Emma aside and tried to explain. Yes, I get it. These kinds of games aren’t her cup of tea. Yes, we should also play the kind of games she likes. But, I pointed out, I’m trying to get the family together. And then, maybe I opened up a little too much to my 12-year-old and told her that, look, I’m supposed to have a 7-year-old to play with right now. That was the plan. I’m supposed to be too engaged in chasing a first grader around to pester her too much. But I don’t, so maybe I’m now transferring some of that energy to her and maybe it’s holding her down a bit, but it’s where we’re at.

She’s a smart kid. I think she got it.

So, as things stand, our compromise is that we’re to play Scotland Yard tomorrow after breakfast. We’ll see. We’ve also just realized that we have to do a grocery run tomorrow and I work at 1:30 p.m. Maybe we’ll pull it off or maybe we won’t. You just have to keep trying.