Playing Monopoly with Boys

The first time I played Monopoly with my husband, we had been engaged a few months and were still getting to know each other. We were three players, me, my sister, and the new fiancé.

By the end of the game, my sister had declared bankruptcy and thrown her money at him, and I had a nasty scowl on my face and was rethinking my decision to marry this mean man. A side of him, I had never seen before had emerged and robbed us of all our money, while building massive hotels before we had even passed Go, he charged us hundreds of dollars every time the miserable fate of the dice led us to his properties.

And as we begrudgingly handed over our hard earned cash, he did an obnoxious dance of glee accompanied by an annoyingly non-rhyming song of utter arrogance.

Already, we felt like crap for being broke and mortgaging our pathetically scattered properties, eyeing the collection of one missing land in his possession that could allow us to build houses and hotels.

“You’re on my land. Pay up!” I snapped.
“How much?” He grinned, flipping through his offensively thick wad of notes.
“Six dollars…” I mutter between clenched teeth.
“What? How much?”
“Six. Dollars.” I enunciate irritated at the mockery I was being made into.
“Keep the change…” He throws me a ten before rolling on the floor laughing hysterically.

Four minutes later, I’m borrowing money from Basma to pay him 2000 dollars, because I landed on the damn Board Walk and he has a big fat red hotel on it.

“Damn you and your developments. A little humility wouldn’t kill you!”
“Oh come on. It’s just a game.” He says teasingly as he does a little victory wiggle.
“Like hell it is. This is war.”

This humiliation and indignity continued until 3am. When I finally handed over all my valuables to him and sat penniless by the purple squares, which got me the grand earnings of 18 dollars, he declared himself the “winner” and called it a night.

The next morning at breakfast, my sister came to the table looking all ruffled and hung-over from the game.

“You know, I don’t really like him that much anymore. He used to be really nice until yesterday.”
“I know! Nothing ever pissed me off so much as losing to a big tap-dancing man.”

Three Years Later…

A few days ago, during the long holidays, a friendly game of Monopoly was played, to pass the time. As the three unsuspecting girls sat to play with four suspicious looking boys, they didn’t imagine that the game was going to end 6 hours from now and that at the 4^th hour, war would temporarily break out, hostages would be taken and all the girls would withdraw.

Apparently when boys “play” games, they really live in the game, even if it’s a stupid board game with tiny boots and hats representing their manly selves. The passionate way money was counted and the alliances, signed contracts and under the table trickery was all foreign to us girls. We like to simply roll the dice, say please and thank you and are constantly apologizing, when someone pays us lots of money for landing on our plots. While the mafia of men are seizing property and pushing others to mortgage, we’re coming up with frilly financing plans to allow the poor victim of fate, some pocket money to buy shoes and still rent the room at New York Avenue.

Testosterone on the other hand, works quite differently. Every man carries the mandate, I win, therefore I am. And so they played, ruthlessly and without mercy. My own husband, only wanted me to “join” his team when my alliance to another became a threat. I didn’t buy it and refused to succumb to their manipulation. (He wanted my train stations, my main source of income) I said no and retreated to my sofa, penniless. Again.

At 5:45 am, as the little houses and hotels, cards and dice were put away safely into the box, I silently swore that I will never play anymore co-ed games.

The funny thing was that while the boys yelled and argued about made up rules and unfair alliances, we cowered in the background hoping that a fight wouldn’t break out and make everything all awkward. But when all was done and the winner emerged, the boys slapped each other on the backs laughing and joking and later described the evening (early dawn) as having been such fun and would love to do it again soon. What? Really? What about all the hostile yelling and screaming? We thought heads were about to get ripped off. Apparently not. What we witnessed was boys being boys. Scary.

Needless to say the girls were traumatized and decided that next time, we would play Trivial Pursuit, which was more difficult for the boys, because they didn’t know half the answers. Playing Monopoly with girls is probably not as exciting but it will be a while before I forget the irritation of male competition and play with boys. I wonder when my next memory lapse will be.