Monday, January 15, 2007
Playing monopoly
My family likes to play Monopoly. They call it "El Banco". The version they have is Portugese. I have no idea why; nobody in the house speaks Portugese. If it were up to the boys, I think we´d play Banco every night. As it is, I think I´ve played more in the last week than I have in the last 20 or so years.
Andres is always the banker. He doesn´t like to play, just likes the power of controlling all the money and the property. Hermelinda is a very cautious player. She almost never buys a property unless one of her grandkids tell her to. Ricardo is super aggressive. He loves to gobble up all the properties and load them with houses and hotels.
There are two things I love about playing this game with them. First, they play as if the money is real. It hurts to lose it; they are genuinely delighted when they land on the community chest and get the pile of money in the middle of the board. It is as if it´s real money.
And second, though Andres and Ricardo are sharks, they don´t want anyone to lose. Whoever gets the "get out of jail" free card shares it with whoever lands on the "go to jail" square. (THere is genuine discomfort when Hermelinda lands on the go to jail square and they almost never send her there.) When Ricardo is flush, he pays all his grandmother´s rents. Andres slips me $100 bills when I´m low on cash. Yesterday, I was wiped out and they kept changing the rules so I could keep playing. Really sweet.
Andres is always the banker. He doesn´t like to play, just likes the power of controlling all the money and the property. Hermelinda is a very cautious player. She almost never buys a property unless one of her grandkids tell her to. Ricardo is super aggressive. He loves to gobble up all the properties and load them with houses and hotels.
There are two things I love about playing this game with them. First, they play as if the money is real. It hurts to lose it; they are genuinely delighted when they land on the community chest and get the pile of money in the middle of the board. It is as if it´s real money.
And second, though Andres and Ricardo are sharks, they don´t want anyone to lose. Whoever gets the "get out of jail" free card shares it with whoever lands on the "go to jail" square. (THere is genuine discomfort when Hermelinda lands on the go to jail square and they almost never send her there.) When Ricardo is flush, he pays all his grandmother´s rents. Andres slips me $100 bills when I´m low on cash. Yesterday, I was wiped out and they kept changing the rules so I could keep playing. Really sweet.
# posted by Anne @ 12:57 PM 
