G is for Games

Visiting my mother this week, I discovered all our favorite childhood games stacked on a shelf in the laundry room.  Most of the boxes are a bit ratty, but the boards are fairly intact and nearly all the playing pieces are miraculously still in their little cardboard slots.

These are the real deal--vintage seventies rainy-day specials.  Including the best game of all time: CLUE

My sister and I always fought to be Miss Scarlet.  She was older, so she usually won.  My second choice was Professor Plum; third was Colonel Mustard.  No one ever wanted to be Mrs. White.  

And then there was Twister.  This game was only fun when I was about twelve and when there were boys around.  My mum and I looked Twister up on the ever-reliable and always factual (ahem) Wikipedia, and we discovered that Twister was first released in 1966, but it didn't become a hit until Eva Gabor played it with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.  What a hoot that must have been!  Apparently, Milton Bradley was accused by its competitors of selling "Sex in a Box."  Well, duh, as we  used to say when we were kids!

From the looks of it, our Twister spinner is one of the early ones.  Don't ask me who wrote the numbers on it or what they were for.  We were always inventing our own spinoff games using various bits and pieces from other less-loved games.

Last but not least is the Ouija Board, produced by Parker Brothers, who, forgive the pun, had quite a monopoly on the game industry in those days.  Ouija isn't strictly speaking a game, but we treated it like one, albeit a terrifying, pee-your-pants kind of game.  Sitting around the Ouija board in a dark room with candles lit and a half-dozen or so kids wired on orange soda and chips is one of my most vivid childhood memories.  So vivid that I ended up writing a poem about Ouija, which I've included below just in case you're in a poetry mood.  It's written as if it were the rules for how to "play" Ouija.  Definitely read it aloud.  It begins as a kind of funny poem, but don't let that fool you.  Read all the way through, beginning slowly and letting your pace pick up as you go.  I should mention, too, that it's not a poem about childhood.

Ouija-Board Rules

“Ouija board, ouija board, ouija board,

would you help me?

Because I still do feel 

so horribly lonely.”

--Morrissey

The board should be bought

during a waxing moon

at a two-family yard sale 

in Ohio or Vermont,

or found on a Wednesday

at the town dump, 

or passed down 

from a spinster aunt 

with gout and houseplants.

It must be kept 

in a box whose corners

are held with cellophane

tape the color of tea,

and after obsessive use 

for three consecutive nights

during which six

thirteen-year-old girls

receive this message

from the spirit world

three consecutive times:

warning staircase good bye,

it must be wedged

with trembling hands

on a shelf in the hall closet

beside the hat box 

with the brown fedora no one has worn, 

and between the Candy Land 

and Clue with missing candlestick

replaced by a penny marked 1973.

It must wait then for at least 

a decade in the dark to speak.

Only then, on a weekend 

when the house smells of pea soup

and a particularly pungent

strain of family tension and loss,

may it be taken down,

the planchette placed gently

as a beating heart 

in its center,

and the fingers of those present

may take their positions.

Expect nothing.

Let someone else ask the questions.

Do not let your pulse

quicken its pace.

Place a pure silver coin

over the moon.

Picture a piece of the one you lost--

the crescent scar behind her ear--

never picture her face.

Do not want this too much.

When the planchette trembles,

glides to the letters,

let someone else spell the answers.

The room will be dark, of course.

Spirits like dark, 

and rain’s good, too.

Windows will rattle

as windows do.

Ignore words

from the man who died

in the basement

or the sea captain 

who murdered his second wife.

You’ll be tempted to flip 

on all the switches, bake chocolate

chip bars, play Twister, 

which you found in the closet, too,

but do not let go.

Wait for the words that matter,

the ones for you,

the ones from her,

the ones she never said,

the ones about bacon 

sandwiches in the park 

on a Sunday; the word shoe,

which could only mean

the one you lost chasing

her drunk down Deering Street

on New Year’s Eve.

Wait for her words,

the ones you never heard;

do not let go.

If they don’t come,

if you must,

if all else fails,

ignore the others

around the board,

push the planchette;

push it past S, past F,

past YES, past the sun,

past the moon, past Parker Brothers,

and X;

push the needle in the heart,

push it all the way to HELLO--

do not let go.

(This poem was previously published in Mid-American Review, published by Bowling Green State University, and in my chapbook Learning to Tell Time, published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks.)

I'd love to hear about your favorite childhood board games.  Do you still play any of them now?  I think I'm going to pester my nephews to play Clue with me sometime soon.  Maybe now I'll finally get to be Miss Scarlet.