The Game Of Life - WTF??

After returning from our honeymoon almost 12 years ago, my new husband and I ventured out to Toys R Us to purchase some board games. We got Life, a chess/checkers combo set and some other game, maybe Monopoly. I guess we thought we were going to sit around playing board games together, potentially even participating in other cute, lovey-dovey newlywed-type adventures such as going on daytrips, decorating our new abode and cooking healthy meals as a pair!! However, we had apparently been spending too much time on another type of newlywed activity because there were most likely actually three of us in the Toys R Us that evening, if you catch my drift. Unaware of the situation at hand, we returned to our townhouse, cracked open the game of Life and played it. Little did we know that the real game of Life had something else up its sleeve. Maybe a couple of weeks later, I found myself venturing to Target in search of a different type of product, one that could detect trace levels of human chorionic gonadotropin in a woman's urine. Fast forward to our first anniversary - we had a three-month-old daughter and of course the board games were rapidly collecting dust in the closet in favor of more important pursuits, such as sleeping and maintaining an acceptable level of sanity.

Today, our first daughter is about to turn 11, and her younger sister is 8. Unfortunately, we haven't been very good about playing board games with our girls, and as such the game of Life has been in a near-constant state of hibernation since 1999. This afternoon, the 8 year old said she wanted to play it, so we hauled it out of the closet. I couldn't remember the rules at all, so I had to bust open the directions and refresh my memory. We distributed the money, put the little pegs in our little plastic cars, and off we went around the game board. I was delighted when C opted to attend "college" and announced that she wanted to be the banker for the game. I must be doing something right after all!

By this time, the almost-11-year-old, N, had returned from her friend's house and was watching us play. C went around the board quickly and ended up at the end of the path where the players "retire," but not before getting married, having a set of twins and purchasing a house complete with a homeowners' insurance policy. I realized I wasn't sure how to actually win the game, so I consulted the rules again. The last sentence of the rule pamphlet stated:

"The player with the highest dollar amount wins!"

REALLY?

For some reason, that totally pissed me off. Maybe I'm PMS-ing. I'm sure as hell not pregnant again, because I'm an Essure Woman. So in this game you can become independent, raise a family, and have a rewarding career, but you can only be the winner if you have the most money? What a crock! Apparently I had neglected to be annoyed by the objective of this game the last time I played it in 1999, maybe because my husband and I were too busy putting same-sex pegs into the front seats of the plastic cars and giggling like Beavis and Butthead. I felt like telling the kids that this game is jacked up, but I kept my mouth shut. I wanted to tell them that happiness is priceless and can't be obtained via money and "stuff." I wanted to tell them that the pompous douchebags retiring to "Millionaire Estates" could actually be soul-lacking shells of humanity rotting away in a pristine, gated community. I wanted to tell them that money is important, but that in the end, it probably doesn't help you "win" much of anything.

Fortunately for everyone involved, I never actually went off on this tirade. N and I played the game together after C and I finished our round, and we all had fun together, which is the most important thing. Now if you'll excuse me, N and C are upstairs trying to kill each other. The real game of LIFE is calling.