“The Inner-child Wants to Play”

By

Gerry Niskern

There are bunnies, chicks, beautiful eggs and jelley beans everywhere we go in the valley these days. That only means one thing. Easter is coming and the family is making plans.

Easter is a special time, a time for family gatherings; in other words, knock down, drag out quarrels and fights. Or to put it another way, family games! You remember board games, don’t you?  Those were the games everyone, young and old played in the days before it became the norm to shuttle the kids off into the other room with their solitary Nintendo and computer games.

It’s time to start checking out the new games for fun at the Easter get together and for summer vacation time. There are loads of new ones out there.

Of course you can’t beat our family’s old stand by, Gestures, a different form of Charades that’s good for all ages. Even the tiniest player can try to guess the secret movements of his team. (Just make sure the men’s team doesn’t use their zoom lens on the video to see the answer cards across the room. Trust me, I speak from experience on this issue!)

As children, everyone played games. Old Maid, Tiddly Winks, Go Fish and puzzles to name a few. How about Monopoly, Parcheesi, or Aggravation? Those childish amusements helped us develop skills and knowledge. We learned about planning, strategy and reasoning. And if we’ve been lucky, we have been able to remain enough of a child to still enjoy the challenge of a game.

How does your family compete? You know, when you think about it, it’s all about competition. My sly old grandma knew about that human trait.   She used her grandchildren’s competitiveness to her advantage as we gathered in her kitchen on cold winter evenings. First she dumped a stack of corncobs out in the middle of the floor; then all the little cousins were given a large pan and told to see who could shuck the most corn. I don’t remember what the prize was, if indeed there was one.  But she always had dry corn for her chickens throughout the winter.

I remember when I introduced our oldest grandson to his first board game,  Hi-Ho Cheery’os. He was three. He was so taken with the idea that I was awakened the next morning at dawn with a little face peering down at me and saying, “ Hey, Grandma, do you remember that game?

There’s an old saying that goes something like this, “ You can learn more about a person’s character after an hour of game playing than you can in a lifetime of conversation.”

Easter also brings new boyfriends and girlfriends to meet the clan. The young people in our family don’t worry about their friends passing inspection with Mom and Dad. The important question is “Are they game players?”

Sooner or later, after the baked ham and strawberry pie, someone will suggest a game of spoons. That’s played by passing and collecting sets of cards and then everyone grabbing for a diminishing supply of spoons.  If the new girlfriend hangs in until the end, even after breaking a nail or two, Grandpa can be heard to whisper, “She’s a keeper, get that girl an engagement ring.”

I found our old Mr. Mouth game the other day. On one Easter day I introduced my little two-year old great-grandson to the trick of flipping the small disks into the opening and shutting frog’s mouth. I’m not sure how much I learned about his character, but I was playing Mr. Mouth the next day as the sun came up over Piestawa Peak.