Games People Play

by Nicholas Allen — August 25, 2007

My favorite episode of the last season of The Sopranos has to be the one where Tony and Carmella spend the weekend at Bobby and Janet‘s lake house. Those of you who‘ve seen it will recall that what starts off as a simple night of board games eventually erupts into a violent, bloody brawl. My life couldn‘t resemble The Sopranos less, but I‘ve learned over the years that there‘s nothing like a round of board games to bring out hidden truths in the person you‘re dating, as well as your friends and their significant others.

Patricia and I are going out to the Hamptons again this weekend, and I‘m sure we‘ll spend a fair portion of it the same way we did last weekend—playing (drunken) board games with the other couples we‘re staying with. As noted in an earlier blog this week, we discovered last time that one of our friend‘s girlfriends thinks "board games are stupid," and is generally unpleasant to be around—an insight brought out by the games, and one that completely brought down the seven other people she was with. It was also somewhat telling when the date of a friend of ours, who‘s creeping up on 40, couldn‘t answer a question about the TV show Three‘s Company, for the simple reason that she‘d never heard of it. But then, she was born in 1984—the discovery of which was a humbling experience. I guess for guys like my friend, dating much-younger women makes them feel younger themselves; for my own part, I can only say that it made me feel old for the first time in my life.

Being a guy (and one who‘s not ashamed to admit I enjoy witnessing the occasional bloody brawl), I was kind of hoping that somebody in the group would get so violently competitive, he or she would slam their fist down on the board and send the game pieces hurtling into the air. I had a girlfriend in high school who, enraged to find herself losing to me at a game of Monopoly, started throwing the little plastic houses and hotels at me, while screaming in red-faced fury and insisting that she wasn‘t going to play anymore.

Some people take these things far too seriously.

Fortunately for me, Patricia seems to be the kind of woman who enters into the spirit of the game with an appropriate level of competitiveness, while ultimately being able to handle defeat in a gracious and good-humored way. It‘s the sort of thing that probably bodes very well for a possible future relationship, but essentially kills any hopes for lurking violence I might have looked forward to this weekend.

Nicholas Allen is a writer and columnist based in Manhattan. To read all of his blogs, click here.