More Monopoly

That revelatory first game of Monopoly was not the only one we played. A week or so later, we all sat down again in our makeshift living room for another round. The same pattern began to emerge - three pretty hardcore Monopolistas working their capitalist mojo on the board. We went back and forth, giving money, taking money, plotting strategy, wheeling and dealing and laughing all the way to the bank.

Then, the inevitable happened. KD hit some bad luck (my "control the corner" strategy with the light blues and magentas worked) and had to start mortgaging property. I smelled blood and used my new income to put hotels on all my properties. A few turns later, KD hit the big bucks properties of Dorothea - Park Place and Boardwalk (in fairness, we have the updated-for-the-21st-century version, so she REALLY landed on Fenway Park and Times Square). Dorothea graciously offered a huge discount for KD, and even said she didn´t have to pay - just move on so that the game keeps on going. KD paid (she´d hit Free Parking), and then Dorothea, on her next turn, put extra money from her surplus in Free Parking simply because she felt like it. Her family has a Bible Monopoly, and every so often players have to give an offering.

Dorothea, shortly thereafter, had the unfortunate luck of visiting almost all my new hotels, and then KD came back by for another visit to Kevin´s Corner of Capitalistic Oppression, and that was the game. However, all I could think about as I went to bed was, again, the Monopoly board as a microcosm of our world - what would happen if countries, corporations, individuals, played life a little more like Doro than like me? What if we really could just write off a little momentary profit, simply to keep other people in play because it´s the nice thing to do? What if we could give deeply of our own resources, simply because we can, it´s good for the soul, and it helps other people? What if we didn´t set up traps for the people who can´t get out of them and for the people who could wipe us off the board, but would rather not?

Anticlimatic postscript: Fear not, my Monopoly playing friends - Kevin is not going to ditch his favorite board game, or particularly amend his playing strategies...it´s a game, after all. But life isn´t - those bad endings don´t go away when you put the pieces back in the box.