Rules Rule!

I love rules!  My friends, family and co-workers will tell you that I am a Rule Follower. I find it difficult to handle when others don’t follow the rules.  I am not bragging and I am still trying to work out whether it is a desired character trait or a character flaw to be a Rule Follower.  I may not change the world by following the rules, however, I feel I am doing my part in helping us all to get along by following the rules.

It may be due to the fact that I spent many, many hours of my childhood playing games.  Games with my friends, my parents, my brothers, myself, games with cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

As cheesy as it may sound, I learned important life skills playing games.   I learned how to take turns, how to read and follow step by step instructions to figure out how to play a new game, I learned that it is NOT ok to knock the Monopoly board and all the money and all the little houses and all the playing pieces and all the Community Chest cards and all the Chance cards off the table and all over the floor because my big brother had bought every single property and I owed him rent every time I landed on ANYTHING and I didn’t have any money left and he had tons of money.

From an even younger age I learned how to use my brain playing concentration to match cards.  I learned how to count to 6 with dice games, how to match colors on Candy Land, how practice makes perfect and all of a sudden one day you will be able to shuffle cards and do the frrrrrdddddddttt after the shuffle to get cards back in a neat stack.

I learned that sometimes you gotta use a timer and if you can’t get things done exactly like you want them, time is up and you gotta move on.  I learned that many times you make a mistake and play the wrong card and more than anything you want to take it back and have a do-over, but you just can’t.  It’s against the rules. You gotta move on.  I learned that sometimes a game may not be turning out like you want, but you gotta play on and see it through to the end and then you can move on.

Luckily I married a man who likes to play games too.  In fact, one of our wedding showers was a Games Shower.  We received some memorable games that we still play to this day – some thirty odd years later.   When we had two little girls, we taught them to love playing games and have carried the tradition through their high school days with Sunday Family Dinner and Game Night.  Even now, when we can manage to all be at home or on vacation together, we still play games in the evenings.   We have fun, we laugh, and most of the time we don’t remember the score or who won.  (Well, at least I usually don’t remember who won).

I just assumed that everyone grew up playing games, but I was shocked to learn that, NO! some people don’t even know how to shuffle cards!!!!  What?  I plan to do my small part in helping you and your family learn the beauty of game night, the joy of playing a game together, the life lessons learned while sitting on the floor or around a table playing with friends and family.  I would love to know what games you played as a child and what games you play as a grown-up. Do you like group games? Loud games? Action games? Strategy games? Card games? Board games? Let us know in the comments.

While you play remember that in games as in life, it’s not whether we win or lose, it’s how we play the game!