Sore Loser

Married, over 13 years, and I’d never played Monopoly with my husband.  Now that we’ve spent an evening doing just that, I can tell you this:

My husband is a total a-hole when it comes to Monopoly.

Caleb received the game for his birthday, which was on Sunday.  Caleb was the car, John was the battleship and I, of course, was the top hat.  Because I look good in hats.

John greedily took Park Place and Boardwalk, was spiteful when I got a hold of Marvin Gardens, and had a look of utter glee in his eyes when I landed on his two-housed Indiana Avenue.  Also, he tried to trade Caleb one utility card for Connecticut Avenue, which would have given him a monopoly.

I quickly put a stop to that. 

The protective instinct is strong in mothers, even during games of Monopoly.  What I don’t understand is why Caleb, despite my allowing him to pay half in rent when he landed on Pennsylvania Avenue, still hooted when his father tried to financially bankrupt me.  After I stopped yet another shady deal between John and Caleb, I looked Caleb squarely in the eye:

“Say you don’t appreciate that, Caleb.”

“I don’t appreciate that, Caleb!” was his response.  He and John howled together.  I felt dumb.

It should come as no surprise to you that I lost. In the end, I had a house on Baltic and two “get out of jail free” cards.  We didn’t exactly finish the game as the board was destroyed by an encroaching Australian Shepherd.  As far as we can tell, Caleb, thanks to landing on the Free Parking spot several times, came in at a close second, and John, thanks to his shrewd business sense and lack of pity, won.

Toward the end, I considered Monopoly divorce just to get half of John's Monopoly cash and real estate.  Unfortunately, there are no “Monopoly divorce” guidelines.  They should probably add that in the next edition.  I bet fewer boards would be thrown across living rooms.

(I get a little emotional during board games, which is why we don’t play Scrabble any more.)

Here is a fuzzy picture of fuzzy Kiah before she went all Napoleon Bonaparte on our board game: