Fun and Games
Our life isn’t all fun and games but they figure prominently. Finally taking most of our moving boxes to recycling meant we had space in the basement to put up a dartboard. I had forgotten how much time I had spent playing darts as an undergraduate. Over the years and across many moves, I’ve carried a small wooden box with a set that I bought when I had nearly no money. I agonized over the expense; back then 20 dollars required deep consideration. With our new dart board mounted, all those hours spent on improving consistency are coming back to me. (Photo: That floor!).
On Tuesdays we regularly meet a group of friends at Rowley’s Farmhouse Ales to play games. One of these friends, Dale*, hosted a party over at her house last Saturday. The gang took this opportunity to re-enact an accident/murder? that had been a topic of discussion for months. Dale had brought it up during a round of disc golf because she was horrified at the thought of drowning in a foot of water at the bottom of a rain barrel. When Dale explained the situation many were highly suspicious of the story the dead woman’s husband told the police. Thus, the group’s attempt to test various aspects’ plausibility. The results of the re-enactment were predictably indeterminate. (Photo: Nat can reach far enough into the barrel to rescue a cat without getting entirely inverted).
I don’t think anyone moves to Santa Fe to play board games. We didn’t, but it’s great good luck for us that there’s such a fun and welcoming community here. Board games have been an important part of our life wherever we’ve lived. When Robert and I first started dating, his good friends Henry and Audrey gave me a belated birthday gift of a game, “The Hobbit.” This was remarkable because a) I didn’t know them very well and b) Robert and I started to date AFTER my birthday. In Austin we hosted a Friday evening games group for more than a year until COVID ended all in-person gatherings and we shifted to playing Small World online with our friends Kathleen and Steve. A benefit of retirement is that now it’s more fun and games than ever.
* Dale earned her PhD in physics at the University of Wisconsin, a fact that might interest at least one reader.