The Game of Life

Recently I took a trip to the beautiful state of Colorado to visit siblings three, six, seven and nine. I stayed at the home of sibling six with her husband and two girls. One of her girls is at the age where kids like to get rid of the aggression they feel towards the bossy adults in their lives by beating the crap out them at board games.

And so we all played the Game of Life.

After struggling to remember the rules a bit, I soon recalled that the Game of Life is much like real life, where most of your success depends on the cards you draw, but some of it can be tracked to good choices.

And that’s why my niece can usually kick my butt at this game. Her mom gives her choices.

For example: She was driving her little Game of Life car around the board and she stopped to get married. This is the part of the game where a girl adds a blue peg to the car to symbolize her husband.
Or so I thought.

I was reaching for the blue peg to put next to her pink one in the front seat of the car and my sister kind of stopped my hand mid-motion and looked at her kid very casually and said:

“Honey. What color peg do you choose?”

I was very confused and said: “What do you mean?” I thought there was some new rule that had developed in the last couple of decades.

“Well,” said my niece. “We believe in choices. And so now I have a choice whether to be homosexual or heterosexual.” Today I think I am going to choose . . . . to marry a woman.”
And she popped a pink peg into the front seat.

When I landed on the marriage square, the pressure was on. I got the eye roll from my niece after choosing the blue peg (“boring,” she said), but defended my choice by saying I wanted children.

“You can ADOPT,” she smartly retorted.

I won that Game of Life, in the end, and she pouted a bit about that. But I think she is going to be a big winner in the real game of life because that kid has something that I never had enough of.
That kid has CHOICES!!!