Monday, February 15, 2010
Bored games
I was thinking earlier about games and how I miss playing board games. Now when I'm bored I go straight to my computer and hop onto facebook to play a computer game. I miss the simple human interaction. That's the whole point of a board game isn't it? Having fun with other people. Thankfully, I've found online entertainments that allow and encourage me to chat with other players. But it's not quite the same. Something is missing and it makes me a bit wistful for the times when all I had to do was round up my roommates for a game of whatever we wanted to play that night. My single best memory of freshman year was playing Dutch Blitz in the common room instead of studying for finals.
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I'm totally with you on this one. One my most favoritest things to do growing from a grain of pollen into a fully formed adult human being was to play board games - for the social interaction, camaraderie, competition, snacks (mmm) - all the intangibles that made it so much more than "just playing Scrabble" or whatever game it happened to be.
ReplyDeleteMan, we played everything too. Dozens of card games, chess, checkers, Scrabble, Boggle, Yahtzee, Life, Operation (I dominated that), dominoes, Connect Four, Uno, Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary; you name it, really... and yes, Hungry, Hungry Hippos as well.
Somehow I never get the same warm fuzzy feeling playing games online as I did playing with my family or friends. There was nothing better than a lazy weekend day playing a game with my mom and brother (and my grandma, who appears gentle and elderly but is a razor-sharp game shark beneath the disguise), or putting together a jigsaw puzzle, or having all my friends over for an evening of D&D and pizza (yes, we really did do that).
Funny how "connecting up the world" has made us all more alienated from each other in terms of real human contact. Do we chat and vaguely keep in touch with more people now than ever? Sure. Do we have meaningful conversations and spend "quality time" with those people? Nope - we're too busy we everyone and everything else.
Bah humbug, give me a time machine and let me go back to the 70s or 80s. Or the 50s - they sound like they were pretty cool too. Shoe skates, hula hoops, baseball, walking to the corner store with a nickel and actually getting something...
*sigh*
Sign me up for a seat in that time machine. I'm thankful for technology making it easier in some respects but overall, I agree.
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