Sorry…

Note: although the title of this post is “Sorry,” this post is not in any way an apology for not blogging lately. I apologize if this was your initial thought. Deal with it.

Our son Avi is 5 1/2 — and is at the age where he can follow the rules of some games pretty well.  So we decided to break out some of the classics to see what would stick. (Well, that’s not entirely true: at preschool he discovered the adrelinaline rush that is “Hungry Hungry Hippos” and spent a week begging for it at home. We’ve secretly bought it for him but are saving it up for a special gift-giving occasion.  Have you played this game lately? Noisy!)

He was aware of the game Chutes and Ladders already. Actually, his first exposure was a reference to it as it is referred to in the U.K. — as Snakes and Ladders (which, I believe, was the original name). He’s a fan of the BBC animated series Charlie and Lola which has since been ported to this side of the Atlantic, appearing in the Disney Channel’s morning rotation. (And he likes the books a lot).  Anyhow, he was excited to find out that we did, indeed, have Chutes and Ladders and has been enthusiastic about playing it.

With us.

For him it’s become an adventure. As he’s still enthralled with the Dinsey/Pixar movie Cars, he sees this as a giant race between two (or three, if both of his parents are playing as well) of the cars.  I don’t think he has determined that it’s a game solely based on chance — you spin the spinner, arbitrarily being assigned a number bounded by 1 and 6. You move forward that amount of spaces. If you land on a square which has been assigned a “chute” or a “ladder,” you descend or ascend per the game board. And that’s it.  The excitement comes when you land on 28 and clmb the big ladder to 84 or when you land on 87 and tumble down to 24. Or the notion that you can be ahead one moment and fall very far behind the next.

And he eats this up.  He can become excited at the sudden changes and express his emotions. But a moment later he’s ready to move on. We’ve noticed that he’s good about keeping it in perspective (“It’s only a game”) and that he doesn’t try to manipulate the rules get ahead.  He has accepted that he doesn’t have to win all the time, and I think that’s all dandy.

Last week, however, was a step up from the random world of Chutes. We decided to involve the Brothers Parker into a game with more strategy.

And that game? Sorry.

For those of you unfamiliar with Sorry, it’s a game which is mostly chance with a bit of skill thrown in. Each player (up to four) has four pieces which must make it from their starting point to “home.” Moves are determined by instructions on cards which are drawn. And if you land on another player’s piece, then Sorry! That piece is whisked back to the starting line. But since each player has four pieces in play, choices must be made: do you want to get your pieces home more quickly? Do you want to impede the process of the person ahead of you? Are you concerned about in-game retaliation? All of these become factors in the game.

And then there are the “Sorry” cards — which, if drawn, allow a player to move a piece from the starting queue onto anyone else’s piece in play, thus booting them back to Start.  This can also elicit quite a response if a player’s piece is almost home safe and all of the progress has been negated by another player.

Av is getting acclimated to this game.  The notion of multitasking all four of his pieces can be a bit tough for him — he’ll often look at just one or two and forget that his other pieces are on the board at the time — but he’ll start the process of determining the strategy of his potential choices.

Another fun part is saying, with such glee in one’s voice, Sorry! once you’ve bashed their pieces off the board and sent them back to start.  Of course, Sorry! never meant “sorry.”  It’s the tone of voice that seals the deal and grinds at the nose of one’s opponent.  I suppose even calling the game Sorry! is a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps they named it this because Parker Brothers already had a game in development called Yeah! Eat it, Bitch!

But as a I play more and more Sorry, I’m seeing the intricacies of the game. How difficult is it to be a manager of four players / pieces / pawns / employees / soldiers which are moving independently of each other and at random intervals?  What do you do if one or more of those pieces has an opportunity to advance if it means leaving the others vulnerable? At what cost do you engage the pawns of another player? Do you keep those under your watch together? Or do you simply move them one at a time through the battlefield?

Perhaps I’m thinking the game through a bit too much.  But I’m just happy that we have something active that we can do together indoors that doesn’t involve playing video games or staring at the television (or a monitor).

Just wait until he learns how to play Risk…