On board games and marriage

Our first Christmas together was a lot like all the other Christmases of my life (with the possible exception of the time we ate Christmas dinner at the closed Hogi-Yogi in Kanarraville, Utah. It wasn't really at all like that one) but we got a mother lode of board games. Board games: the perfect gift for newlyweds, right? We have lots of free time, spend every evening together, and can only watch so much Netflix before our brains rot and our eyeballs turn square and the children in Africa starve and all that. We anticipated entering the second board game phase of our lives (the first one having begun at age 8+) with excitement . We needed constructive activities besides television. Not that television counts as a constructive activity, Mom.

Unfortunately, turns out there's a whole chapter about board games in the marriage guidebook (unbeknownst to us -- it really would have been helpful if I'd EVER gotten my copy) discussing various topics such as "Games to play and games to avoid," "Knowing when to stop," "What to do if you feel bad when you lose," "What to do if you feel bad when you win," and "How to tell if your spouse is using supernatural powers to defy the laws of probability." The chapter, apparently, also includes helpful tips like "Don't keep track of your spouse's winning streak," "Have a back-up plan for when game night goes downhill," and "Tears are remarkably ineffective and just make you look like a baby."

It would have been nice to know these things before we got married, like how it's a good idea to know how to say a few things (please don't touch me, I'm actually allergic to that, where is the embassy) before you visit a foreign country. But since we didn't, we're figuring it out as we go along. It's been fun, really! And we just bought Scrabble today, so I'll let you know how that goes.

Thanks for the board games everyone! We're learning a lot. It's just causing a little stress. Kind of like looking for the embassy in Berlin.