The Game of Life

So the other night I was staring intently into my closet. I wasn't in search of what shirt and tie I would wear tomorrow but instead I was looking at my bored games.

Please note that I refer to them as "bored" not "board" for reasons that:

1. Most of them do not consist of a few plastic pieces and a board anymore, rather an elaborate construction of plastic and diecast metal characters that when putting back into the "easy storage box" would make a professional map folder suicidal.
2. The only reason you are playing these games is because your Playstation or Gamecube isn’t working.

I digress.

I gazed from spine to spine evaluating the probability that if I even voice my opinion to my would be adversary would it be a waste of breath. I quickly dismissed “The Simpsons Jeopardy”, a thoughtful Christmas gift from my parents that I had received a year previous. In fact I have never played this game because the only person I could think of that I could actually play it with and have a worthy opponent would be Madison Sinclair, and that would only be if prohibition was resurrected and our speakeasy got busted up. So by default “The Simpsons Clue” and “The Simpsons Chess” were eliminated as well.

Once again, I digress.

Finally I saw it, Milton Bradley’s “The Game of Life” (unfortunately I do not own The Simpsons version). I reflected back on all the good times I had playing this game and the better times I had playing it on my computer (less setup time and funny cartoons result in an increase of enjoyability). This reflection spurred an inner dialogue between my current self and a past self.
When I was younger this game of ups and downs gave such an optimistic look at life. Think about it, in about 2 spins you have received all of your education and you are making a decent paycheck (although I do think the game which was created in 1860, needs to be adjusted for inflation every 5 years). In almost 3 more spins you are married to some woman named “Peg” (that’s game piece humor) and you have a house.

It happens that quick. We’re not even 30 spaces into our “Life” and the most important part of real life is done and over with, and there is still another 3/4 of the game to go. Personally, I’m not even past the education part but I have a career, a child, and I’ll be getting married (not to Peg) in less than a year. To push the point even more, I will not be climbing Mount Everest, flying a plane, or curing some rare disease and even if I did cure some rare disease I would certainly be paid more than $2000.

I concluded that this game is not even a close representation of “Life”, and I began my search for a game that more closely resembles it. I left my closet space and ventured to my son’s closet.
Try as I might but I could not draw any parallels involving “Hungry, Hungry Hippos”, “Trouble”, “Sorry”, or even “Star Wars Monopoly” (I really tried on this one). Then it hit me, really it hit me, I was pushing boxes to the side and then it slid off the shelf and whacked me in the head; “Chutes and Ladders”. Whether you are playing with chutes or snakes, this game is truly “The Game of Life”.

There are no ridiculous spaces claiming that your house has burned down, or that you have won some “contest”. Instead you trudge through the 100 grid squares moving, at most, 6 spaces at a time. If you are lucky you might land on a ladder and you move ahead quickly. But just as I have experienced, for as quick as you move through your life you can always hit those damn chutes and it brings you down and you have to start moving up either by ladders or space by space.

Nobody is certain what life holds, it’s about as predictable as a 20-sided die. All you can be sure of is that there will be ladders to climb, slides to go down and someone will always make it to 100 then the game of “life” is over and you only made it to 73.