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Pictionary  (and Other Bored Game Adventures)
by Jason DeShaw

Board games.  They should really be called Bored Games, because that is the only reason people take one of these monstrosities out.  It always sounds like a good idea at first, "Hey!  I know, let's play a board game!"  Hoorah!  The people rejoice as they run to pick out a board game.  Life, Monopoly, and Pictionary, the games that everyone always has on hand are the top options.  They grab one and go sit down in a circle around the box.  This is where the laughter stops.  It's never as easy as just opening it up and setting up.  Anyone who has ever played any board game knows that when they open it up, they find a gigantic mess of every scrap of paper and ever piece of plastic thrown together hastily inside a box being held together by tape.  For the love of God WHY must people never put the game back together properly?  The rubber bands are obviously there in the box!  You can always find them under the pile of fake money!  They sometimes even come with cardboard dividers, but those are just folded up, crammed back inside trying to shut the box as quickly as possible.  Why such haste?  You will see.  Eventually, after hours of sorting, piling, and organizing, you finally get all the pieces back together and are ready to play.

The Game of Life of course is in no way like real life itself, and in the ways it is like life, the goals are really in all the wrong places.  Lessons I've learned from Life...

1. If you want to be a step ahead of everyone in this world, don't go to college.  It'll only give you two more job options in the long run, and you can always make it as a cop instead.  Then, while you are in college, you always get shafted on that $5000 spring break trip while everyone else is cashing in on paydays.  Who needs all that debt anyways?

2. When it's time to buy a house, you close your eyes and pick one at random.  When you open your eyes and see a big fancy house, you lose.  Obviously, it's always better in life to get a smaller, crappy, cheap house so when that tornado or flood comes your way you won't be paying most of your salary out to replace it.

3. Boys are blue, Girls are pink, end of story.

4. Kids suck and cost money.  At least you get a Life card when you have some.

 5. Speeding tickets cost $5,000

6. At some point in life, you will have the option of trading salaries with your friend whether they like it or not.

7. No, I don't want to go to Night School.

8. At the end of Life, we will all end up in a retirement home.  We'll all get together and count up how much money we have, and whoever has made the most money in life will have had "the best life" and be deemed "winner".

Capitalism at its best... or is it?  Monopoly one-ups Life in the world of Capitalism as you, as I'm sure you all know, force your opponents out of the game by monopolizing the board and taking all their money.  Once again, Monopoly is one of those games that always sounds like a great idea at first, but after 18 hours of it, its no longer fun.

Every game starts off the same, with everyone wrestling over who gets the racecar and then someone is shafted and ends up the thimble.  The first 15-30 minutes is fun as everyone quickly tries to snatch up all the properties they can, and one fool holds everything off for Boardwalk and Park Place.  Finally, everything is purchased and in comes the long-haul...  Everyone looks around to notice that no one has a Monopoly.  There is a stand off where no one will trade anything no matter how crazy of a deal it is.  This lasts for about 3 hours.

5 hours in the bargaining begins.  Of course, you always have to end up trading three or four crap streets like Baltic, Connecticut, and Virginia to get just one of the more coveted locations such as Marvin Gardens or Pennsylvania, and then you don't always even get a Monopoly!  Finally though, someone does get a Monopoly or two and the next 13 hours is just going through the motions of rolling dice and moving your pieces around the board.

Around hour 7 the first person is eliminated.  Nobody is happy by this.  Most people feel guilty and have the person "merge" or join their team, because no one wants the person to sit around doing nothing for the next 11 hours.

By hour 10, the people eliminated start to outweigh the people playing.  The eliminated people start to go off and do their own thing and have fun, while the remaining players are strapped into the endless game of Monopoly.

Somewhere in that 18 hour time span will be multiple arguments around Free Parking (whether or not you get money, and how much), and where the taxes go (the bank? put it in the middle for free parking? but wait, are we doing free parking? then how much? GOD MAKE IT STOP!).

Hour 16 rolls around and there are only two people left.  Jail is now the safest place.

As the 18th hour approaches, it's been pretty obvious for the past 12 hours who is going to win.  Finally, that person makes his killing stroke, and the only good feeling is that the game is finally over.  All the monsters swirl around and go back into the game.  People tie some bricks to it, and throw it into some deep water so hopefully no one else will ever have to suffer it's wrath again.  Ok, that was Jumanji, but it's close enough.

Believe it or not, Pictionary is actually a board game too.  You move your pieces around and they dictate what you need to draw.  You land on a space and pick a card, and whatever category you landed on you must attempt to draw.  Sadly, these can hardly be called categories.  Just read these...

P - Person/Place/Animal (or related characteristics)

O - Object (things that can be touched or seen)

A - Action (things that can be performed)

D - Difficult (challenging words)

AP - All Play (any type of word)

Wow.  The only acceptable categories here I would have to say is Action and Object.  Person/Place/Animal (or related characteristics) is so broad its not even funny.  Well, it's slightly amusing, heh... heh...  but that doesn't make up for it!  Then you have Difficult (challenging words).  Why did they need the parenthesis.  If you don't know what Difficult means, you can't draw what they are going to tell you.  Then there is All Play (any type of word).  So really, this is pointless, because there are already All Plays in the game which are denoted by triangles next to the other categories.  It doesn't even need it's own category!

Then there is the actual drawing and guessing, which is where the madness starts.  When you are the drawer, you get incredibly angry that the person guessing can't get something as simple as "Fountain of Youth", but instead keeps saying "ummm Fountain of Babies... Baby Fountain... Baby Fountain... Fountain of Babies... Fountain of Babies... um... FOUNTAIN OF BABIES!"  For the love of God, it wasn't right the first time you said it and it isn't right now!  WHY WOULD I HAVE TO DRAW A FOUNTAIN OF BABIES!  Then, when you are the guesser, you are angry at the drawer as you look at the page, and it is clearly a fountain and a baby.  Fountain.  Baby.  YOU KEEP POINTING TO THEM!  FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY IN THIS WORLD GIVE ME SOMETHING ELSE TO WORK WITH!

The game usually ends with a person impaled with a pencil.  Well, attempted impaling.  The pencil is too dull to do any real damage.

So next time you think of playing a Bored Game, think of others around you.  Is it really worth it?