Weekend Afternoon Delight

When my siblings and I were younger, we did not ask for toys as much as kids would normally do. My older brother would be happy and content with his little plastic toy soldiers which he would play with by himself, strategically positioning them on the bed setting up a "battle field," with blankets and pillows as his make-shift terrain and mountains. At that time I thought he was extremely silly mimicking sounds of explosion and gun fire, creating his very own war zone simulation. Apart from that sort of play, I hardly remember anything else. And oh, we'd also collect the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from fastfood value meals. As for myself, I've had one Barbie, my clearest recollection of which is its head being accidentally pulled off by my brother (now that I think of it, was it really accidental?). I must also admit that I had quite a number of stuffed toys - but mostly gifts from grandparents, aunts, and other relatives.

There were not many memories of playing with toys or buying toys or wanting any particular toy. And when I reminisce about fond memories of my childhood, image of playtime does not surface. I never consider this as any form of deprivation or missing out, for we had an absolutely enjoyable and fun-filled childhood. My parents made sure that things that we acquire or activities that we dwell in would eventually contribute to our learning and development. Anyway, what I have a lot of clear memories of are evening scrabble and boggle sessions with my mom and my older brother. I was so addicted to these two games; my mom has set these sessions to be interesting and playful instead of presenting them as a mode of study. Another reason that I can think of, now in hindsight, is perhaps because I was competitive with my brother and word games are one of the few things that I mostly always come out as a winner of. Our bookshelves and cupboards were abundant with board games that we love, including cluedo, monopoly, hangman, guess who, pictionary, among others.

That probably explains why up to now I am still a big fan of board games. Some of them can be enjoyed by even just two people, while others are better played when there is a bigger group. My collection have grown since, added onto the list, although non-exhaustive, are guesstures (a game of charades), cranium (combo of charades, art & drawing, fact trivia, and vocabulary & words), risk (a war game heavily based on strategy, attacks and counterattacks), betrayal at house on the hill (adventure game). These days, scrabble is still around the top of my roster of favourite board games. In fact, I'd call it one of my weekend afternoon delights. On lazy weekend afternoons, over steaming latte or capuccino, A and I would challenge each other to a game. The beauty of scrabble is that it's a game that tests not only the players' vocabulary, the knowledge of the existing 2-letter words (yes, this is quite important when having to connect to other letters), but also the level of one's game plan, the ability to formulate a strategy. We'd like to see it as a friendly game, and yes it always is... but no mercy. Ha ha! I must say that it is all the more interesting when playing with people who are genuinely interested and who do their best to come up with a good word, who actually strategise and plan out on how to kick the opponent's arse. Only in this scenario can a player feel the challenge, thus contributing to a good game. I find too that during these games, long-buried words that I haven't used or encountered for eons of years suddenly resurface... and there's a feeling of gladness and delight! Bizaare, isn't it?

In one of our games, I took the liberty of taking a shot of the game's conclusion. And yes, everything you see there are real words, they exist and have meaning, not some random word that we imagined and made up.... hmmmm.... sometimes A wouldn't believe me though, sames goes here... a bunch of sceptics. *wink*

See, mom really knows best. She's introduced something that will forever be ingrained in us. Time for another play!