I’ve been thinking…
…about playing games.
We are card players. My mom and dad were bridge players. Dad had his regular poker game with his Lions Club buddies. John’s family were into pinochle, canasta, and a crazy game called “Liverpool.”
During Thanksgiving week, PopPop and Noanie began teaching Mallory and Jamie Liverpool. We will acknowledge that it is such a strange name, and we have no idea the origins, though Wikipedia offers that the game is from the U.S. (so why “Liverpool” ??). It is a rummy game, multi-round with 3 to 8 players. Hmmm. Ruddimans tend to push the edges on that. We have had as many as a dozen raucous players yelling “Buy! Buy!”
As we sat at Jayne’s kitchen table with two budding Liverpool sharks, John and I fondly remembered the many games with his grandmother and his mother, and then with our kids. Five generations of card players. That’s pretty special.
Kids today play a lot of games, but on their IPads or other screens — often by themselves. Yet there is value in playing games WITH others. We enjoy Chutes and Ladders. (I never win that game.) We had fun with something called Connect4 — again, I’m bested each time. Young John is a Monopoly whiz. Cameron knows all the tricks with Uno. Cara rocks Bingo.
After an afternoon of games — together — Mallory commented that “Games in real-time are really fun.”
Huh. Real-time games. What we called “games.”
The holidays and winter in general are the perfect time and place to play games with children — of all ages. Little ones are delighted when they outwit the adults at the table with their clever play. Everyone gets a chance to practice good sportsmanship.
Board and card games make a great gift. But the best gift of all is spending time playing these games together.
But of course.
See Jayne’s activity this month for tips on how to engage youngsters in joining adults at the card table — and more!
