Of Dice And Men

By Liberalchik

OTOOLEFAN has recently become obsessed with board games and we aren’t talking Monopoly or Life. No, we’re talking about games that can only be found by googling “games your girlfriend will never play with you”.  He finds it hard to believe I’m not burning with excitement about playing ‘Broadside’ a game loosely based on the War of 1812.

And he isn’t content to search the internet for games quietly.  No, he must show me every game accompanied by an oral dissertation on the complexities of each one.

It started out innocently enough with Chess. We now have 4 Chess sets. I don’t play Chess.

Then Scrabble. I beat him badly. We haven’t played that again.

Then after hearing him talk about this game called ‘1960 The Making Of The President’ for weeks, I ordered it from eBay.  It took a couple of weeks to get here, and even longer to learn how to play. It was a pretty good sized box, heavy, with a text book of instructions. The board, a US map, covered about ¾ of the dining table and once it was set up with all the markers, cubes, momentum thingys, etc, there was no moving it. It was so complex, that it took us almost 2 weeks to play it the first time. Oh yeah, I was Nixon. Blah.

He loved it, I liked it okay. But that’s what love is, right?

But now, revenge is mine for it is that magical time of year that I turn into the Christmas Tree Nazi. I know it’s only Halloween and not yet Thanksgiving, but one must prepare. Understand that I am already kind of a decorating Nazi, bit anal there, I am a Virgo after all. But at Christmas, I am fierce in my determination to create the perfectly decorated tree.

Complicating things, this year for the first time, I have abandoned the standard one big tree for three Alpine trees in different  sizes. And apparently, the only suitable style for Alpine trees is Primitive Country. I have nothing Primitive Country.

Last year I let him participate in the tree decorating and it gave me heart palpitations. He kept muttering something about my “penguins facing due North”. He says these trees will look like they’re decorated in Early Blair Witch.

So while he is scouring the internet for a game about Andrew Jackson and the Bank War, I am tearing up eBay looking for CHEAP primitive tree ornaments and raffia. He shows me a game, I show him a snowman. He tells me about The American Heritage Battleship Game and I explain to him that we will not be using tinsel this year.

This is communication, this is  understanding.

This is love between Game Boy and Christmas Tree Nazi Girl.