Monopoly and Mantras

This is an excerpt from my current work in progress, from a chapter titled Monopoly and Mantras.

…By the time they were old enough for board games I was desperate to find engaging activities that didn’t involve risking broken bones, blades, or bribes—activities that would allow me to play with them while sitting still. Board games, I was convinced, were my ticket to air-conditioned family fun that would also teach critical thinking, patience, and frustration tolerance. What I didn’t fully consider in advance, I must admit, is that what some games really teach is mostly a certain form of capitalist ruthlessness and how to tolerate boring gameplay for extended periods while gifting the leading player the illusion of skill and agency when in reality their relative prosperity really comes down to the luck of the dice.

Yes, Monopoly, I’m looking at you.

As someone who grew up playing the classic version of Monopoly, I was initially charmed by the Community Chest and Chance cards in the Australian version. We found ourselves paying $50 to go on a trip to the outback, or get our photo taken with a Koala, or because we lost a bet on the cricket with our mates. We earned $10 from every player by renting out our Bondi beach house. We all groaned when we had to prepare for bush fire season by cleaning out the gutters on all our properties—for each house pay $25, for each hotel pay $100.

But the quirky cross-cultural charms of the Australian board do not even come close to compensating for the emotional anguish this game is capable of inflicting.

The first day the boys played Monopoly, Alex came barreling into my office, climbed into my lap, and spent 15 minutes sobbing about how Daddy had bankrupted him. I half hoped this rocky start might put the kids off the game entirely, but no such luck. They continue to periodically want to play it, despite the relational risks.

Here, in no particular order, is a list of issues that have repeatedly triggered Monopoly-related meltdowns during the past five years:

Who gets to be the kookaburra. In the Australian version of the board game, the game tokens are a BBQ, a cricket bat, a kangaroo, a meat pie, a surfer, and a kookaburra. Everyone always wants to be the surfer or the kookaburra. No one wants to be the meat pie.
The existence of jail, and what exactly the rules are around getting out.
Whether the player whose turn it was had moved forward the correct number of spaces.
Whose turn it was.
The rules around mortgaging and un-mortgaging property. (“Dominic, how many times do we have to go over this? You do NOT have to land on the property to un-mortgage it. YOU JUST PAY THE BANK!!!”)
The leveraging of taxes (although this one is perhaps fair enough, I sometimes cry over taxes in real life.)
Whether you pay fines and taxes into the center of the board and then collect all that cash when you land on free parking. (No. Why not? Because… rules. And bending them like this just prolongs the anguish.)
Whether you get to collect one of every bill denomination from the bank when you roll double ones. (Again, no. Not even when you yell “snake eyes” when you roll double ones.)
Whether the bank or another player HAS to float you a loan when you run out of money. (Also, no.)
Whether you are allowed to join forces with your brother halfway through the game—combining all your property and money to create a fraternal oligarchy—and continue playing. (I deeply regret we ever let the boys do this even once, because we have not heard the end of it since.)

We played a lot of games of Monopoly during the first two years after COVID hit, and some of these games were even completed without outrageous demands, protracted negotiations, crying, and board flipping. Most of them, however, were not. And some games involved all of those enjoyable experiences, like the evening when Dominic—who, incidentally, I have never beaten at chess—demanded that the “boys team” start the game with one and a half times the regular amount of money on the grounds that they were playing at a disadvantage because of the average age discrepancy and were not capable of being as strategic as the parents team.

All three of the other players, even Dominic’s teammate, protested. We tried reasoning with him, and then (when five minutes of dissent and negotiation proved completely ineffective at accomplishing anything except escalating his demands) we left the table.

Cue shouted allegations of betrayal, the disowning of me as his mother, and continued rage-filled demands to return immediately and “show me the money.”

It took about half an hour for Dominic to back away from this emotional cliff and calm down. And, as any parent who has had to work very hard to exude calm in a highly charged situation for an extended period of time knows, it subsequently becomes harder to hold it together when faced with additional and more minor irritations.

By the time we made it back to the table and played for Monopoly for twenty minutes (with equal money for everyone) and then the boys had showered, brushed their teeth, petted the dog, and were supposed to be heading to bed, I was thoroughly exhausted. So when Alex came out of his bedroom again, playing with a balloon and asking for a drink of water, right when Dominic turned around and suggested we unbox my new desk chair which arrived that morning, I very nearly lost it.

“Boys!” I said through gritted teeth. “I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I am almost completely out of patience.”

“I hadn’t,” Dominic said seriously. “So thank you.”

***

Later that week, Alex wanted to return to this marathon Monopoly game—a game he was clearly going to win—for the fourth day in a row.

“I don’t want to play this anymore,” Dominic said, when Alex tried to cajole us into coming to the table. “I want to play Settlers.”

“I want to play Settlers, too,” I said hopefully – though I mostly wanted to play anything except Monopoly by that stage. “How about we declare you the winner, Alex??”

“But it’s not about the destination,” Alex protested loudly, clearly having enjoyed slowly bleeding both of us dry over the last several days. “It’s about the journey!”

“But every time we play Monopoly it always ends in screaming,” Dominic said. “So how about this time we stop before we get to the screaming.”

This was the most sensible statement I’d heard out of Dominic all month.

“Oh, Dominic!” I said. “Good call. I think I can see a new family mantra in that… DO THE GRACEFUL QUIT BEFORE IT TURNS TO SHIT.”

Both boy’s mouths dropped open.

Most of the family mantras I regularly trot out are gentle uplifting reminders along the lines of, “Is that kind, helpful, or necessary?” or “Gentle hands,” or “You can be mad without being mean.” Never had we coined a family mantra that celebrated quitting and incorporated profanity.

“MUM!” Alex said, scandalized. “You told us shit was a level 7 out of 10 swear word!!!”

“Alex, you’ve been present for every single one of Dominic’s Monopoly-related meltdowns,” I said. “They are level 7 out of 10 events, are they not?”

“They are,” Dominic confessed.

“How about you go play outside?” I said.

“I know!” Alex said, “Let’s play that new game we made up.”

“What new game?” I asked.

“It’s called Annoy The Heck Out Of Me,” Dominic said. “You have to sit down and then the other person tries to annoy you while you try to ignore them.”

“Like this,” Alex said, sitting down and closing his eyes.

I watched while Dominic circled his brother, considering. Then he reversed his backside towards his brother’s back and carefully perched on his shoulders.

Alex held still and kept his eyes closed.

“Are you farting on Alex’s head?” I asked.

Alex opened his eyes and heaved Dominic off.

“No,” Dominic said, clearly tucking that idea away for the future. “I was just sitting here.”

“Sit down!” Alex said. “We’ll show you how it works!”

“Boys,” I said. “I don’t need to sit down for you to show me. You are masters of this game. You play this game with me all the time. Morning, noon, and night. At breakfast, at bedtime, and all the times in between. And you often win.”

They laughed.

“I wasn’t done with you, Alex,” Dominic said. “Go outside and sit down again.”

Alex obediently went outside, sat down, and closed his eyes.

Dominic scampered into the garden, snapped something off a plant and came back.

“Now open your mouth,” Dominic commanded.

“WAIT!” I cried, as Dominic went to shove something inside Alex’s waiting mouth. “Is that a CHILLI?”