50 for 50: 2015

YEAR: 2015

AGE: Turned 45 on Nov. 6

LOCATION: SLC, Ramona Avenue

SONGS I LIKED: "Shut Up and Dance" by Walk the Moon; "Uptown Funk" by Mark Ronson with Bruno Mars; "Riptide" by Vance Joy

TV SHOWS I WATCHED: "Life in Pieces"; "The Muppets"; "The Flash"

MOVIES I SAW: "Jurassic World"; "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"

My fascination with board games back to before I knew how to play them. I couldn't understand the mechanics behind games such as Clue, Masterpiece, or Monopoly, but I would still play with the components as a preschooler. I also learned how to play Chess when I was 5. I wasn't a prodigy by any means, but still, I was 5 ...

After we moved to Rascher, My neighbor George and I played board games often. We had elaborate house rules for Monopoly, but also frequently played Pay Day, Gambler, Life, Risk, Connect Four, Stratego, Kismet, and Trivial Pursuit. Other favorites from my youth included Ruffhouse, Stay Alive, Bonkers, Trust Me, Careers, Upwords, Parcheesi, All-Star Baseball, and, of course, Strat-o-Matic Baseball.

Lori and I had some board game moments -- mostly Scrabble; she hates playing Monopoly with me -- but I really didn't start discovering board gaming as a hobby until the boys arrived. I think I realized that playing non-video games with them was a way to spend time together, and board games had come a long way in the new millennium. The Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley standards of my youth were basic and, frankly, a little boring compared with newer, less mass-marketed games such as Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, and Catan.

The game surge began gradually in the early 2010s. Scoping out classic games at thrift stores became a fun Saturday excursion, and we started discovering games the boys would enjoy such as King of Tokyo. Games became a safe Christmas present, and the boys started understanding more complex rules. When Ben was 6, our game store hosted a Table Top day, emerging on a Wil Wheaton web series, and he won a game of Catan against adults and ran a victory lap around the store. I started listening to gaming podcasts while walking the dog.

Around 2015, the game collection exploded, much to my delight and Lori's chagrin. This might have been one of the last years I could get both Ben and Michael to play games often -- Michael lost a little interest when he became a teenager. Ben, with his mathematical mind, was always more eager to play anyway. 

The games are in three locations in the house -- the upstairs closet, the downstairs closet, and a small cabinet in the basement. I've already purged the game collection twice, donating many to the boys' old school, putting the little kid games into storage crates that the future grandkids can play, and relegating some into extreme storage until I can figure what to do with them.

Inevitably, we've been playing fewer games. Time for two teenagers is at a premium, and sometimes, well, they just want to be on their own during the evening. The number of games I've purchased in the last couple years has dwindled to a trickle, and we have a few co-op games we haven't started yet.

That brings me to 2020 and 2021 -- trying to restart a semi-regular family game night. We were playing games at the beginning of the pandemic (though didn't play Pandemic ...), and with the weather turning colder and our schedule potentially being derailed by spiking case counts (ugh, we better have a basketball season ...), maybe we can make it happen and even get Michael enthusiastic about it.

What looms is what to do with all the games after the boys are gone in a few years. I probably won't get rid of them -- I love the classic games for nostalgia, and some I can get Lori to play. I likely will find a game group to join, which is something I don't feel as if I have time to do now -- and frankly, with the pandemic, I'm not in a rush to meet strangers in a confined space.

But my immediate hope is the family game night. I'll even let Ben do a victory lap if he wins.