The Games We Played

Growing up, one thing that makes us different from other families is that our parents were away in times of typhoons. No classes for kids and no work for parents mean bonding moments for the family. My mother happened to work on Red Cross, which primarily does relief operations.

On normal days, my elder sister, brother and I have separate worlds. It was only on these days that we get to play together. I can’t remember who (between ate or kuya?) really owns the Millionaire’s Game; this is what we play with since typhoon means no television. My sister usually takes the role of the banker, and the rest (with other playmates) become the players. The whole point of the game is to purchase property and get your opponents bankrupt by making them pay on instances that they land in the houses, hotels and others that you own. This was in grade school.

All of these memories came back when I read an article which declares Monopoly and Scrabble to be the most popular board games of all times.

Well, Monopoly happens to be the more prestigious version of Millionaire’s game. What our cousins have was the Monopoly. We later have Scrabble. My sister, being the smartest one, beating her would always be one great challenge. As I reminisce at this moment, I can even imagine the smell of the Piknik or Pringles container where we draw these tiles from.

We had several sets of scrabble. The one that lasted long was around in high school. This was when a bored seminarian from the parish nearby would seldom come to our house to play scrabble with us.

A little later than that, after we gave the forced and due retirement to our Millionaire’s Game set, we then upgraded to – what else? Monopoly. There was another typhoon and there was nothing we could do. We approached a nagpapahulog to finance the purchase of that board game set. We, siblings contributed on the amortization of the installment payments. We’re still all students at that time but I think my sister and brother were both in college then.

I can’t remember anymore which came first, but we did the same teamwork we do when we purchased our family computer. We were envy of our neighbors and other friends who have family computer since they have parents abroad. We collected our savings and joined forces to buy our own. Sadly, we never really get to enjoy that much because of numerous reasons. First, our elders have rules that we can only use the television starting around noon. Then, we were not allowed to use it that much because it may cause damage to the television. Lastly, we had that unit at the time when it starts to become obsolete. We cannot even buy a tape (or how do you call it? iyong bala ng computer.) because there is no more available ones.

Let’s just say we’re the last ones to get to know Mario and Luigi. This was at the same that our peers would brag about street fighters in their Playstation. Just like when we bought Betamax at the time when VHS hit it big.

Memories would come from now and then. We have sets of English encyclopedia and storybooks which I only understood later on. We would settle on improvised games using those books. Ours parents have play house especially constructed for us which the whole barangay called “the Bahay-bahayan”. (Sugal)

Twenty plus years after, I am the one who became the bank teller. In a day my nephew asked me to play Monopoly with him, it was a day after a typhoon and a year after a failed career as a banker. It was in a very different light. It was in a different Monopoly set. I had our original board set lent to a friend but was never returned. Now, I am playing with the son of my brother, in his board set bought by his father. I’ll always remember this game. We were so confused having the UK version set, and playing the US version rules. We just cannot reconcile the correct amount to dispense on each player. We ended up playing for hours without having anyone bankrupt.

My brother, who was the strategic one in buying houses and hotel, is now an engineer. He’s the most likely to become the “Millionaire” being a Project Planner not in building houses nor Hotels but infrastructures in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Algeria. It’s just sad that after winning and losing battles of his life, he has yet to draw the line between game and gamble. I just hope he picks up the pieces and recover. I’m sure he will not let the zombies eat his brains!!!!!!!!!!!

My sister plays a big role in vocabularies of hundreds of students being an English teacher. We’ll never fail to look up to her. What I would always look back on are the times when Gelo (my nephew) and I would have to visit her every Sunday. She had the difficulties carrying her first child since due to our family condition; she had to get married at an older age. At those times, we would spend that day playing thumble bugs (a computer game). Her daughter came out as smart as Text Twist player for knowing everything as she speaks.

We went through hard times -my kuya experienced the hardest, and realized that life is not an easy game.

Today, it would be such rare instance getting together when typhoon hits. My father is no longer away on these times to assist on relief operations. This time, we are. My brother works abroad. My sister moved out when she got married. I also did.