Playing Games

"You're such a bad looser", one often say if someone gets really upset when losing a game. And when my daughter was little, we dreaded to start a game of Monopoly with her, simply because she threw tantrums if she didn't win, and then she was sulky and upset for hours. She probably got that from her father, he wasn't much fun to play with either. On the other hand, he excused himself, and I think he might have a point there, with him being so competitive.

I'm not a bad loser; of course I like to win, but if I lose I just don't seem to care that much. However, I'm starting to think that that not necessarily only is a good trait. Maybe a few more fighting bones in my body wouldn't hurt?

But it's not that I don't care about the game, on the contrary, I care a lot. You see, I don't mind losing, if everyone's just playing fair. What I do mind is cheating, and twisting and bending the rules. That really makes me upset. And now I think I'm just about to throw a tantrum too...

I played a game of cards the other day. Card games a tricky that way, as those 52 cards of the deck (joker excluded) can be used in so many ways. You can even play on your own, but this game though, wasn't a game of solitaire.

The cards were dealt, and I thought I knew which game we were playing. There are a zillion different games; there are gambling games, trick-taking games, rummy-style, shedding and accumulating games, fishing games and so on. And of course, there might be local family rules as well, just to make it even more complicated. But as I said, I thought I knew what we were doing, and placed my bets accordingly.

Disaster, and I lost bigtime. Really annoying, 'cause I might have played differently if I'd only read up on the rules. Damned dogs...