Game on!
Game on!
My brother Jack and I once had a contest to see who could jump rope the longest without missing. Just thinking about that grueling challenge exhausts me now. He won!
Remembering the family ping-pong games that took place in our basement makes me smile. We kept track on a chart: Dad played my brother, the winner played my sister, and then the winner of that match would play me. Sometimes I’d win, and often I’d lose, as the list kept changing.
My life has always been full of play and games: board games, card games, and active games. My childhood included Hi Ho Cherry-O, Crazy Eights, Chinese checkers, and Monopoly. Later our family graduated to blackjack, Jarts, Yahtzee, Shut the Box, Scrabble, badminton, ping-pong, and baseball.
Play and games followed me into elementary school, where they became important, too. Each day, I’d watch the clock, eager for recess time, when we could play tetherball, four square, and red rover.
In the evenings and on weekends, I’d meet up with the neighborhood gang for red light green light, freeze tag, and baseball. Once, my neighbor Tommy and I smacked into each other so hard during red light, green light that I had to go to the hospital, where they packed my nose to make it stop bleeding and told me not to pick it. It never looked quite the same after that. Playing hard can do that to a person!
My dad set up an old backstop in the field next door, mowed a path, and set out lawn chair pads for bases. It was a hit, and we played often. The teams seemed about even, as far as who won and who lost.
I come from a long line of game players. On my dad’s side, it was horseshoes and croquet. We played them both as a family, but not nearly as much as my dad told us he had when he was younger. I’m not sure if my mom’s family played many games. Maybe not, because she only joined us in ping-pong, never Jarts, and she got mad when we played blackjack. She didn’t like us playing poker either—something to do with gambling, I remember her saying.
As soon as my daughter Jessica was old enough, she and I continued the Schmidt family tradition of playing games together. We enjoyed stackable blocks, Old Maid, Chutes and Ladders, memory games, Operation, Simon Says, and a battery-operated gizmo where we had to quickly put plastic shapes into the correct spots before a buzzer went off.
The tradition continued when my daughter had her own children. New Year's Eve was a favorite time, filled with laughter over wild games of spoons, charades, and Wii video dancing games.
When Dane and I started dating, we started playing games, too. We’d set up the badminton net in my backyard, and Raime, my border collie, would track our every move. If we missed, Raime would snatch the birdie, and it would take a while before we’d get it back, sloppy from his drool.
Several board games—Othello, Battleship, Scrabble, Jenga, and Rummikub—became our standbys for quite a while. Outdoor games, in addition to badminton, have included a rustic variation of ping-pong (hitting a ball back and forth with wooden paddles) and what we call “Bags” (we refuse to call it cornhole). Dane always wins when we play Bags, and I usually beat him at Othello. We even have miniature game sets that we pack along on backpacking and camping trips.
We’re always happy to engage with our friends in play too. Years ago, it was a special treat to visit the Martins' house for a fish fry with the blue gills Roger had caught, and afterwards play dominoes.
During COVID, we burned out on our games and started making ojos de dios (“God’s eyes”) with twigs and yarn and doing puzzles. But we never veered too far off the gaming path.
Recently, we’ve spent hours creating a game for our wedding guests. Whether they’ll participate is anyone’s guess, but for us, our long-standing tradition of playing games will continue. I like to think we’ll have many years to play our favorite games and learn new ones. And for now, with our upcoming marriage, we both consider ourselves winners.