Tonight there is something very special happening. I have been invited round to a friend's house, where a group of us will play Monopoly.
This might not sound big to you, but to me it is huge. Perhaps you'll understand when I tell you this:
I was banned from playing Monopoly for about twelve years. Nobody would play with me. Even strangers had been somehow warned by my family. Ask anyone who was around at the initation of the ban, and they will tell you it was because when I played, I became a freakish monster, raging with capitalist ambition and cut-throat money-lust. But I tell you this: I was banned because I was invincible.
Time has passed. I am older. But I am nervous. The people with whom I will be playing tonight are kind, innocent people. Will I still be The Hulk of Monopoly? Or can I diffuse my inner Trump with the mantra, 'It's only a game'?
I don't want to be ostracised from yet another community - but I also don't want to lose.
And that, my friends, is the problem.
Maybe playing with my Muppets Monopoly set will help.
5 comments:
your parents should have put you into Monopoly therapy
Last night I met Joe Craig for the first time.
I am never speaking to him again.
Joe Craig left my house in the early hours of yesterday morning. I have only just stopped crying.
Also, there is a little metal racing car embedded in my forehead.
James, John, remember - it's not personal, it's business.
I don't like to diminish the significance of the game, or indeed the metal racing car, or most of all to look pissed at 1.59am, but have you tried spending your time between rounds considering exactly how you would organise your time in those little green houses? They're so tiny and symetrical. I always think I'd have to have an open plan dining room stroke kitchen doubling for a living room with attic loft bedrooms and an absolute limit of two children who would be well-behaved twins and very few dinner parties. And what about those hotels? Not much bigger than houses imho. I
More like those b&b's where you get to know the landlord so well he decides he doesn't really mind if you don't pay and you give him a "token payment" and go back every year as a "family friend" each year instead.
More to the point, who travels around London in a big boot?
These things bother me.
Post a Comment