Creative License

This is a story written by Anna for an assignment. She has taken liberty with some of the facts. I'll let you decide what is fact and what is fiction. Overall, I'd give her an "A" for thinking outside the box.

by Anna Leigh Brown

As I recall one of the greater fears of my childhood was 'family time'. My elder brother and I lived a life of almost barbarian freedom. Now, that is not to say my parents didn't love us and care a great deal about us, but they were busy with other things. The result was that my brother and I came to see family as those people you bump into in the mornings when you're both trying to get to the fridge. Thus, it was with both apprehension and confusion that we viewed 'family time'. Now, before we get too far into this, let me set one thing straight. I LOVE my family, I do. And in those spare moments of interaction in the time it takes us to sort out who wanted milk and who wanted butter, we get along splendidly. However, when you force four independent creatures to sit down around one table and "talk about our day", nothing good is to come of it.

I suppose in many ways I had the typical white bread American family, gruff father, sullen teenage brother, and doting mother. However, the added dose of insanity to each of my family members made our weekly 'family time' seem particularly tramautic.

One event which still burns vividly in my memory was the occasion when my mother stole the Monopoly board and locked herself in the bathroom for six hours.

The evening began like any other, my brother in the basement, lurking; my father out on the porch, reading; and I in my bedroom, talking to crayons. However, from the morning all of us knew what was coming. My mother's frequent hints that 'we hadn't really seen each other in forever, and wasn't it nice to gather around as a family?' left little room for doubt in our heads. But in a manner of stubbornness that would have made any New Orleans civic engineer proud, we all refused to see the coming crisis. We each took our refuge and hoped that the storm would pass us by, ignore us and leave us alone and safe in our puddle of isolation. My mother is a crafty hunter though and knows the ways of her prey well. She managed to lure us all out by turning on the television in the living room to The Simpsons, as show much beloved by my father, brother and I and merely tolerated by my mother. At the first commercial break she muted the television and the realization that we had been trapped descended upon us all.

"Well, here we are gather together as a family," if you listened closely enough you could hear the sinister laughter under my mother's words, "wouldn't it be nice to play Monopoly?" Monopoly. It sounded like a cell door slamming shut. When the sentence was cards, or even a puzzle, you could be certain of an escape in an hour, maybe less. But Monopoly was a different story altogether. My mother loved Monopoly with a fanatical passion that would have frightened the most fundamental of Jesus Freaks. She proudly raced around the board as the race car, charging exorbitant rent and pulling off business deals that could only be described as blatant usury. In former life, I am certain that my mother was a loan shark. The worst part for the rest of the family was not her inevitable triumph, we had long grown accustomed to that. It was that she never allowed any of us to give up, we had to go bankrupt in a "proper rule abiding fashion". Practically speaking, this meant that any game of Monopoly was sure to go on until at least 2 am, usually later.

My father was able to develop a tactic my brother and I were never able to quite master. While he bought many properties and never appeared to take any risky moves he somehow was able to manipulate his dice rolls to always land on the properties owned by my mother, and usually those with the highest rent. He managed find his refuge around 10 usually. My brother's method was to simply buy only two properties, the two most useless properties in the game. His income nonexistent, he simply meandering the board waiting for the slaughter. I could never quite take the defeat though, and even though I intellectually knew my mother was going to win, I refused to give up in the same manner as my brother and father. My defeat was always long-drawn, bloody and humiliating.

Until this night. I had been planning. I had been waiting. In fact, I had spent those hours in my room discussing the game plan with my crayons.

My mother distributed the tokens, handing the dog to my father, the top hat to my brother and as she began to reach for my usual shoe I stopped her. Instead, I reached for the cannon and set it on GO. She understood my challenge and smiled with menace placing her race car next to my piece.

From the first roll of the dice, we all knew this game was going to be different. Within 15 minutes my father had gone bankrupt, and his properties found themselves under my control. My brother was eliminated soon after. The battle raged until just as the sun was peaking over the horizon. My mother rolled, an 8. She slowly moved her race car, trembling with the terror at the approaching square. Park place, $200. My mother said nothing at first, she didn't even move. Then with a terrible cry of agony she grabbed the Monopoly board and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind her. I merely collapsed on the table, I had won. My mother's regime was over, Long Live the King.

It was the last time Monopoly was ever played in our house, and when we left America and came to Kuwait my mother left the game in the attic. Fortunately, she had discovered a new passion, The Friday Market.