So in a recent and very scary trip to Toys R Us to get one of my more family minded friends a gift I had a moment of clarity in the board game aisle…we are still playing all the same games we did as kids- only now the stakes are higher and it isn’t play money involved.
I always loved Pretty Pretty Princess and as evident from the explosion I call my closet I still do; but from a dating perspective things haven’t changed there at all either… Any busy night at the bar of the moment is a bit like a game of Twister to get to the bar and procure a drink from the (most likely jack-ass) bartender- left foot red, right hand yellow (opps watch out for that loser on you left!) as you go for left hand green a very handsome guy grazes your chest as he goes for right hand red to get his beer- you see where I am going with this… and occasionally you do end up “falling” into someone who makes it all worth it, and sometimes we end up in a tangled mess. Sunday Brunch has taken of the game Girl Talk- no real explanation needed except instead of zit sticker we have enormous sunglasses and scrappy ponytails and the occasional beard burn (come on ladies you know it has happened to you before- who can resist a 5o’clock shadow after a few martinis) as evidence of our embarrassments(mistakes, conquests- insert last night’s action here) from the night before. We sit around and instead of having a game spinner we have a pitcher of sangria or mimosas to help us decide if we should call him or not. And occasionally time with the girlfriends leads into a real life game of Mystery Date… but isn’t that what all those online dating sights are anyway? It’s all in the roll of the dice or now- the click of the mouse. And while on the subject of said sights; aren’t they a bit like Dweebs Geeks and Weirdos too? You hope and hope to land on the elusive cool guy but really, how good are those odds???
I was never a huge fan of Scrabble- mostly because I suck at spelling and have a tendency to make up words, but more and more I find communicating with the opposite sex to be quite a bit like Scrabble; they give you all this rubbish that you are supposed to somehow put together to make some coherent conclusion about how they feel about you. Sometimes the gibberish they give you makes one of those words worth tons of points and other times it some stupid generic sentiment that gets you like 3 points and then occasionally you end up making up a word and getting disqualified.
But I find the single named games form my childhood are the ones that seem to really have crept back into my life with the most relevance when it comes to dating: Clue, Sorry, Monopoly (that is pretty close to monogamy right?)and Risk… Well Clue is pretty obvious, that Red Flag moment and the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to fall because he is too good to be true. Sorry- the most common and sometimes hardest word to use in a relationship. Monopoly- well frankly it takes just as long to play that game as it does to get into a monogamous relationship and by that point you have hopefully eluded going to jail but have most likely spent most of your money impressing him with either your brilliant property purchases or in my case- new clothes. And then the big one, the one it is all about: Risk, only this time it isn’t world domination we are after. I recently had a conversation with an amazing man who said that at our age it is too hard to risk a “good” relationship to see if there was a “better” one out there. While I absolutely adore this man, I full heartedly disagree with him, (not even going there on the “good” thing- I will not settle for anything less than “GREAT”) at this age I say we can’t afford not to risk it. Every wonderful part of my life has included risk. Yes, there have been times where taking a risk landed me flat on my face (but so does that game of Twister occasionally) but every great and meaningful part of me has come from taking a risk on something or someone.
So I say Game On, I cherish my rounds of Girl Talk, am finding Scrabble a bit easier, am starting to rock at Clue and Sorry, I am not afraid of Risk… swirl it all up and we have The Game of Life, and maybe just maybe I will end up like that couple on the box cover- smiling and driving off in a convertible!
I always loved Pretty Pretty Princess and as evident from the explosion I call my closet I still do; but from a dating perspective things haven’t changed there at all either… Any busy night at the bar of the moment is a bit like a game of Twister to get to the bar and procure a drink from the (most likely jack-ass) bartender- left foot red, right hand yellow (opps watch out for that loser on you left!) as you go for left hand green a very handsome guy grazes your chest as he goes for right hand red to get his beer- you see where I am going with this… and occasionally you do end up “falling” into someone who makes it all worth it, and sometimes we end up in a tangled mess. Sunday Brunch has taken of the game Girl Talk- no real explanation needed except instead of zit sticker we have enormous sunglasses and scrappy ponytails and the occasional beard burn (come on ladies you know it has happened to you before- who can resist a 5o’clock shadow after a few martinis) as evidence of our embarrassments(mistakes, conquests- insert last night’s action here) from the night before. We sit around and instead of having a game spinner we have a pitcher of sangria or mimosas to help us decide if we should call him or not. And occasionally time with the girlfriends leads into a real life game of Mystery Date… but isn’t that what all those online dating sights are anyway? It’s all in the roll of the dice or now- the click of the mouse. And while on the subject of said sights; aren’t they a bit like Dweebs Geeks and Weirdos too? You hope and hope to land on the elusive cool guy but really, how good are those odds???
I was never a huge fan of Scrabble- mostly because I suck at spelling and have a tendency to make up words, but more and more I find communicating with the opposite sex to be quite a bit like Scrabble; they give you all this rubbish that you are supposed to somehow put together to make some coherent conclusion about how they feel about you. Sometimes the gibberish they give you makes one of those words worth tons of points and other times it some stupid generic sentiment that gets you like 3 points and then occasionally you end up making up a word and getting disqualified.
But I find the single named games form my childhood are the ones that seem to really have crept back into my life with the most relevance when it comes to dating: Clue, Sorry, Monopoly (that is pretty close to monogamy right?)and Risk… Well Clue is pretty obvious, that Red Flag moment and the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to fall because he is too good to be true. Sorry- the most common and sometimes hardest word to use in a relationship. Monopoly- well frankly it takes just as long to play that game as it does to get into a monogamous relationship and by that point you have hopefully eluded going to jail but have most likely spent most of your money impressing him with either your brilliant property purchases or in my case- new clothes. And then the big one, the one it is all about: Risk, only this time it isn’t world domination we are after. I recently had a conversation with an amazing man who said that at our age it is too hard to risk a “good” relationship to see if there was a “better” one out there. While I absolutely adore this man, I full heartedly disagree with him, (not even going there on the “good” thing- I will not settle for anything less than “GREAT”) at this age I say we can’t afford not to risk it. Every wonderful part of my life has included risk. Yes, there have been times where taking a risk landed me flat on my face (but so does that game of Twister occasionally) but every great and meaningful part of me has come from taking a risk on something or someone.
So I say Game On, I cherish my rounds of Girl Talk, am finding Scrabble a bit easier, am starting to rock at Clue and Sorry, I am not afraid of Risk… swirl it all up and we have The Game of Life, and maybe just maybe I will end up like that couple on the box cover- smiling and driving off in a convertible!
No comments:
Post a Comment