The game of Clue, unlike some of the other luck based games, required a certain amount of logical reasoning. The premise of the game centers on a murder committed by a murderer, using a weapon, in one room of the “mansion.” The possible murderers include Professor Plum, Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet. The weapon array includes a lead pipe, a wrench and a candlestick. The possible rooms where the murder took place include the library, the dining room, and my favorite, the conservatory(mostly because I never knew a house that had one.)

After a roll of the die, a player can enter a room and make a calculated guess to solve the murder. Each player has been given cards representing several rooms, several weapons and several characters. They can prove the guess wrong by revealing one of these cards. The game proved particularly challenging in my childhood because it required three players. I could always count on my brother, but we had to convince my sister Patsy to join us. She hesitated because being much younger she really didn’t understand how to play and would make random guesses regardless of them having been proven wrong earlier in the game. Hence she usually lost, reducing her interest in playing.

Since it was Jimmy and my favorite board game we tried various strategies to get Patsy to join us. We would insist that it was a REALLY FUN GAME. We encouraged her by saying “I bet this time you will win.” Heartless I know because we were 11 and 8 and she was only 5. But she always wanted to be included in our games, so she usually capitulated.

As I wrote this, I remember how much I miss her in my life.

Here’s to you again, kid.

“Tell your brother you’re sorry.” “Tell your sister you’re sorry.” “Tell your friend you’re sorry.” “Apologize to your mother.” “Apologize to your father.” “Go to your room until you can apologize.” These sentences echoed throughout my childhood. Remorse for actual infractions was pretty slim in most cases. The four of us learned to say, as so many children do, “I’m sorry” whenever we were told to. It rarely correlated to our true feelings. So we would mumble “sorry” only to be told “say it like you mean it.” So we would try to approximate what it would sound like if we meant it.

But thank goodness we had the board game “Sorry” to vent our true feelings on the matter. Because the game was pretty simple, only requiring the ability to count to 12 and to read or have a sibling read the print on the cards, any number from 2 to 4 of us played it. The goal was to move one’s four pieces around the board and into the “safety zone” on the way to “home.” Not too exciting except for the “sorry” card. Here was our chance for revenge. A “sorry” card allowed the holder to swap places with a piece of another player’s and send that player back to “start.” And of course to yell “SORRY.”

Finally we were able to utilize the depth of our sarcasm as we gleefully moved an opponent back to start. We were no more sorry than all those times we had said we were on demand. But this time we were merely following the rules of the game!

My siblings and I had much fun playing Cootie. This game was ideal for our age range, since it only involved rolling one die and assembling the cootie. Each body part corresponded to a number, such as 6 for the legs. The game could go on quite a while since each bug needed six legs. But there was no need to argue over rules, a common disturbance for the four of us!

Amusingly enough, we had no idea that cootie was a real word until a lice outbreak took over our elementary school. This outraged my suburban school community which identified lice with the unwashed poor. Grievously the cure at the time was to dust each of our heads with DDT. Yes, really. DDT on our little heads. Sure it killed the lice but who knows what other damage it wreaked.

That summer we spent with my very proper grandmother. Playing Scrabble I put down the word “nit.” Horrified, she asked me how I even knew that word. I told her about our lice outbreak. She stared in disbelief, then told me I should rearrange the letters to spell “tin” and let it go at that.

Now that bedbugs, lice and scabies proliferate everywhere perhaps the stigma has been reduced. But I still shudder remembering that head dusting.

Long before pinball machines or video games, my first introduction to games was Chutes and Ladders, the game board picture above. It was a version of the game of Snakes and Ladders, toned down, I guess, for American children’s sensibilities. The game was simple; a roll of the dice advanced each player from square 1 on. If you landed on the base of a ladder you climbed it. If you landed on the top of a chute you went down it. The little illustrations showed meritorious behavior granting you a ladder and bad behavior punishing you with a chute. The goal was to reach the 100 square before your opponent.

I was the only child able to count, so at 3 my only opponent was my father. I had no idea that no skill was involved in this game. I remember feeling elated when I landed on a ladder and crushed when I landed on a chute. The game, supposedly fun, reinforced some suspicion of mine that life was somewhat random. I wouldn’t have phrased it that way, of course, but I still remember the mixture of excitement and dread whenever we sat down to play.

I was very relieved when my father brought home the next game, Uncle Wiggly. While this game was purely luck based also, it seemed less moralistic. I happily moved my piece forward and backward across the board, hoping to reach home before my father. Luck being luck we each won fairly regularly. I always chose Uncle Wiggly from then on.

Before video games, I first played pinball machines. I especially enjoyed the one shown above which was in the Greyhound Bus station where I waited for my high school bus ride home. It was a very basic game with the ball coming out from the pitcher position on the board. The flippers were limited to two at the bottom of the game, allowing you to hit the pitched ball or rehit one which rolled back. Each time a ball landed in a base hole, a runner would advance on the screen.

Later I played pinball machines in my 20’s when I encountered them in taverns. I noticed that they were almost exclusively played by men who always achieved scores far above mine. For a long time I thought this was just due to the men having better eye-hand coordination than I did. But once I played against a boy friend of the time. I was astonished to watch him thrust his pelvis against the front of the machine to redirect the ball. I realized then that men were ideally suited for this kind of pinball action. The games were at their hip height and the action was natural.(Remember this is G-rated!) No wonder they got such high pinball scores. And only rarely did I watch any man get the Tilt warning which ended a game.

I continue to enjoy pinball machines whenever I find vintage ones in arcades. But I never again try to surpass the “highest score” shown on the screen.

May the coming year bring you blessings.

Writing about the arcade at Mohegan Sun reminded me of the first encounter I had with a video game. Pong was placed in the lobby of our local movie theater, and for a quarter you could play against the machine. The picture on the right shows the screen with the little dot representing the ping pong ball. The aim was to outscore your robot opponent by hitting the “ball” over the net when it came at you.

While very primitive by today’s standards, this was a groundbreaking experience in 1972. I never could have imagined the games that would follow. I happily dropped quarters in the machine trying to outplay the devious opponent who kept happily shooting the “ball” past me.

Having had such a good time with these first game posts, I will be relating other fun and games in the days ahead. All G-rated, of course. They should be a welcome antidote to the gray gloomy days of January here in New England.

We had friends whose father worked for the county library which for some strange reason owned a house on the Oregon coast. Pictured here are the four of us and the two of them standing on the front porch with the Pacific Ocean in the background. The home was in Neahkhanie, a small, virtually undeveloped(in the 1950’s) beach town. But it had one important claim to fame–a rumored buried pirate treasure. In the center of town there was a welcome sign with a reproduction of the writing seen on the rock on the right.

Needless to say, the six of us were certain that we would be able to decipher the code and find the buried treasure. Armed with no more than a shovel and diehard optimism, we argued about where to dig and how deep to dig. But our enthusiasm quickly died and we simply dug and played in the surf. Only up to our knees to be obedient to our mothers. We were unsupervised but trusted to “never turn your back on the ocean” and to “never climb on logs that are on the edge of the surf.”

We would return after a morning of treasure hunting, wading and running to devour sandwiches. We feasted on tuna salad and our friends’ mother’s specialty, chopped olive with mayonnaise. Never had any food tasted so wonderful. Then, duly fortified, we took off for an afternoon at the beach.

Just before Christmas, I went to Mohegan Sun, one of two large casinos in southern Connecticut, with my daughter and grandchildren. Mohegan has a children’s arcade, pictured above, which we all love. The games are loud, bright and challenging, rewarding points for achievements. As at many arcades, the points can be traded in for kid coveted prizes.

My grandson’s skill lies in the claw machines where one maneuvers a mechanism around a bin of prizes, drops it to “claw” a prize and then brings the prize over to the chute for retrieval. I have never been able to even latch onto any object in the pile, while he routinely picks up things. He brags that he is “king of the claw,” and I have to agree.

I have been a fan of arcades all my life. My first one was in the Oregon coastal town of Seaside. Rain routinely falls on the coast, and to burn off some of our excess energy, my mother would drop my brother and me off at the arcade. There we happily played SkeeBall, racking up points to trade for candy. The Seaside arcade housed lots of old machines, including some not very risque “peep shows,” where for a penny a picture of a woman in a bathing suit was revealed for a quick look. We found these hilarious.

Our favorite spot was next door to the arcade, the table entertainment Fascination.

This game put us in competition with other players in a game involving rolling balls into a bingo grid trying to get a full row lit before any other player accomplished the task. We rarely won, but we enjoyed the thrill of almost winning nearly as much. Anyway, here the prizes appealed more to adults, so we were not too disappointed.

Many people told us we were wasting our money. Even today many accuse casinos of being exploitative. I felt then and now that I was free to “waste” my money any way I chose. And I still choose the flashing lights and loud buzzers on a rainy day.

I was at the gym nursing the tendonitis in my right elbow, trying to lift one leg and the alternate arm in the air while I lay on my back when “Somebody to Love” by the Jefferson Airplane came on the stereo system. I was catapulted back in time to 1967 in San Francisco wearing a tunic designed to be a shirt as if it were a dress. Marijuana smoke was everywhere in Haight Ashbury where my then boy friend was spending the summer. I was there for a brief visit before heading back to college. Everyone was young. Everyone was lithe.

I remarked on the time to my workout partner when my trainer quipped, “that’s the old people’s radio station playing.” Agh. My worst nightmares had come to pass. I clearly remember hearing music from the 1940’s in the grocery store and fearing that by the time I was “old” my music would be played in the nursing home. Having it play at the gym, surrounded by “Silver Sneakers”(people over 65)  members was just as startling. Here I was remembering the precise way I moved through San Francisco humming that song and yet here I was trying to just get one leg and one arm into the air at the same time.

I actually don’t miss being 20. I was what my grandchildren would call “a hot mess” at the time, consumed with love problems. But I do wish sometimes that I could take my wisdom and experience back to that 20 year old body if only for a day. I certainly wouldn’t take it for granted!