I Missed My Opportunity

 I missed out on being an evil overlord.  Well, maybe I didn't.  Maybe I needed years of being a high school teacher, a wife, and a mother to develop my manipulation tactics?  I am particularly impressed with my most recent  . . . we'll say "handling" of my family.  

Many many many years ago, some friends introduced us to the game of Dominoes.  We love to play Mexican Train. 

 In case you've never played- the overall goal is to place all of the dominoes you selected- in a train/row- so that you have zero points.  We play this game a lot.  During Quarantine- we played every night.  We've been playing fairly frequently this summer.  The trouble is . . . some of my family is VERY competitive.  VERY.  So there's a fair amount of trash talking by those family members.  The other trouble is we have different types of strategies- and sometimes some people don't like the strategy style of others.  In order to combat some of the negative feelings and make our games a bit more harmonious- I came up with some family rules. I even wrote them on the back of the dominoes container- so they're official. And while my family may be competitive- they're rule followers and if a rule is written down- it's basically Hammurabi's Code of Law and nobody wants to get their hand chopped off for not following the law- even to win. 

The rule I am focusing on today is: the max amount of points a person can score in one hand is 50 points.  Which helped- as there were some hurt feelings and stomping off from the table.  But there's still so much competitiveness.  I mean .  . . do we have to dominate?  Can't we just enjoy being together, and the satisfaction of placing a domino on a train?  No.  There has to be a winner . . . or does there?  The competitiveness was taking away some of the fun for me.  I play because I like being with these 3 other people.  It turns out- I find them entertaining and fun.  But this game was losing its luster for me.  Randomly I decided to stop counting my points when a game was done.  I just pretended I had 50 points.  Every time.  They were amazed at how "badly I was losing."  "OK, here are the point standings: Dad: 283, Andrew: 210, Alexa: 181.  Mom: 483!!!!! MOM!  You're the worst!!!!"  I tried to assure them that we can play just for the enjoyment of the game.  I mean- that's why I play.  Andrew scoffed: "Yeah- sure that's why you play, you're just trying to make yourself feel better!" I just smiled.  

You see.  People who are super competitive, canNOT stand to play against people who aren't trying.  Sooooo- you want to trash talk?  You want to be cut throat?  Okay- I just won't try.   It took many hands for them to figure out what was happening.  I had developed a very subtle technique so they wouldn't notice my underhanded methods, but Andrew finally caught on.  We're going around telling the score keeper our points left, and I said, "50." just like I had for several other games- and Andrew says, "NO WAY.  You only had 2 dominoes left!!!!!"  

HAHAHAHAHA oh my sweet sweet family.  If I'm willing to do this type of manipulation and scheming over a game- what other areas of your life am I handling you????? Muahahahahaha

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