"No offense, but you're just not a fun person."

Lovingly, my husband

via @evanrosskatz

Did your family play games growing up? Board games, pretend games, silly games, any kind of games? I have zero memory of games except our family would play Uno every time there was a tornado warning. Which in Missouri, was at least once a year. We would grab the flashlights, snacks, blankets, the dog, and Uno. Wildly, someone always knew where it was.

Green Draw Two, green 5, green Reverse passed between us while the sky turned shades of a healing bruise and the lights flickered.

In non-weather events, occasionally my dad would play checkers with me on a woven-checked mat we picked up at Cracker Barrel. (I just revealed so much about myself here.) Don’t get me wrong. We had games. Candy Land, Mouse Trap, some version of Monopoly were piled in our toy closet. But there they stayed, stacked high above construction paper and my brother’s legos.

When I went to college the games were the drinking kind and I played only because I liked drinking. I wish I had a dollar for every party I went to and beer pong was happening in a freezing garage. So and so’s girlfriend would line the table, cheering along, and sizing up any female newcomer, more so if they got in on the action. Scrabble nights were big with the IPA-drinking group where words I never heard of could hit 30 points. The restaurant I worked at had a Friday night poker game I would decline every week. I told myself I didn’t need a (fun) reason to hang out with my friends.

Fun is so complicated to me. Karaoke is fun! Float trips are fun! These are not fun things to me. (Fine, karaoke can be fun, but only with the right people.) All I see is decision-making related work disguised as a leisure activity. Is this why so many men enjoy games? They can employ their Winning! attitude and show off had-earned leadership skills outside the office by making off-duty leisure competitive too?

I didn’t know this perspective was controversial until I met my husband…who loves games. When he suggested recently to our friends a Catan night he was nearly back on the market. When I have participated in the random charade-adjacent Celebrity or poker game I observe that conversation is largely about the game. Laughing about impressions, jarring each other’s poker face, while I really just want to know what everyone thinks about the latest news trending topic. Or as I’m often accused, whatever serious subject we can depress ourselves with. I come alive to heart wrenching world affairs!