Game time

Yesterday, while the girls were doing homework, the youngest and I played his current favorite game. I feel that it merits a description because it's been a big part of my life this week (he wants to play it constantly) and will probably continue to be around for the next couple weeks.

It's called Thief and Police Officer (yes, I'm aware there's a game called Cops and Robbers, but I can't remember it's rules and don't want to get them confused). Anyway, whenever possible he is the thief and I am the police officer. Essentially, the game boils down to this: he pretends to steal something so I grab him and throw him in jail - literally throw, since jail is the sofa. Then I walk away (presumably to apprehend other thieves) and he escapes. So I catch him and throw him back. You get the idea.

I am not allowed to spend very long locking him in his cell because this delays his escape and his favorite part of the game is, of course, getting grabbed by the knees and chucked onto the couch. This does beg the question of exactly what kind of jail I'm running, and how effective police training is, given that he escapes, on average, at least once a minute.

This isn't the only game he's taught me, either. A couple weeks ago his favorite game was a card game called Seven Families. It's sort of like Go Fish, except the cards are specialized so instead of collecting 4s, say, you're collecting all six member of The Family Dakodac in the Mountains. It's not a bad game, all things considered, but unfortunately, being 5 and in kindergarten, he can't really read - problematic when the names of the families are written on the tops of the cards. Yeah, it's a lot more complicated when you're trying to be very clear in your description of the card you need since he's only looking at the pictures. Also, he tries to change the rules, so you have to keep an eye on him.

The other game he taught me was Mille Bourne. Now, admittedly, the last time I played that I was maybe 10, but I'm pretty sure that some of the rules we played by are not actually related to the rules of the game in any way. Also: correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it sort of the point to travel 1,000 miles? Because the other problem (besides some seriously questionable rules) is that he can't actually count to 100, much less 1,000. This did add some excitement to the game ("Ok, see now I've gone 500 miles and you've gone - no, I'm counting, no, I meant, ok, fine. Yes, it's your turn now. Wait, that light is what color?") It made the game ... how can I say this ... an exciting change from ordinary, confining games of Mille Bourne where things like number of miles figure somehow into game play.

At least he doesn't want to play monopoly!