I long for never-ending board game nights, but none of my friends are into board games. Now, I am wondering how I did fall into this circle of friends. They might kill me after reading this or might embrace my choices and become board lovers for my sake,but with this I have felt being the odd one out. I have even come across as compulsive to people while urging them to play a board game. It’s hilarious.
I’ve learned how to adjust with being around people who do not feel the same way I do. I had deduced by then that not all humans are genetically modified to have a ‘skin’ in the board game. While playing, I’ve a dozen feelings juggling inside me at the same time. It’s a feeling of competitiveness with ‘dice(d) throb. It’s all things but calm. Unfortunately, I haven’t come across a single-player board game (suggest if you know one, in the comments). Lockdown during the last six months finally gave me the opportunity to say, “I suggest the crime was committed by Reverend Green in the lounge with the spanner” (Cluedo reference). Our meeting place never changed- it had to be somebody’s home. So, we played all my stacked board games which had never seen daylight.
It was Un ‘o clock ( sounded like one o’ clock in my head). UNO- A card game which I assume all of us have played at least once in our lifetime. Presuming that everybody knew the rules, we distributed the cards and laid the draw pile. Into the second round of the game, the rules had unexpectedly become the elephant in the room. Nobody was aware of the right rules. Everybody knew different versions of UNO. Confusions- whether the player victimised by Draw 2 was supposed to miss that turn, if it was allowed to play an action card in the end, number of cards to pick incase of not saying UNO- spoiled the fun of the entire game.
I’m not fond of rules in life. I am carefree about them ,but in terms of playing games by the rules, I am a maniac. It was not until that day that I realised this about myself. I went ahead and browsed the actual rules. To my dismay, I didn’t even know that if the first card turned up from the Draw Pile (to form the Discard Pile) is an Action card (except for Draw 4), the Action from that card applies and must be carried out.
While writing, something odd occurred to me about my general self. I didn’t like rules but I obeyed them all the time. Games have argued against my perception about principles. They have provided me with a strong reason. Rules prevent us from annoying more people than we usually do, thus, saving us a lot of apologies, energy and time to play pictionary.
Mudita Jain ENG 101 