Among the very few innocuous things we did as kids, was playing Monopoly. Tim, Sue, and I would get the old card table set up and prepare ourselves for a good long Monopoly game! Sue was hands down the best player. Like everyone else when we played poker, we had our own “house rules”. We never played according to the instructions. In fact, when we got a new Monopoly game for Christmas or something, we would throw away the instructions along with the cellophane wrappers that sealed all the game pieces. Having never read the instructions, we must have learned to play from someone else; consequently, our “house rules” were probably more or less the same. Some of our “house rules” were that whoever landed on a property could either buy it or not buy it. If we wanted to buy a certain property, we had to land on it with a throw of the dice. I think the directions say that it has to be auctioned off whoever lands on it, but we rarely played by any of the majority of the rules. We eventually picked up another “house rule” from playing with other kids that put all the fines on the “Free Parking” corner and whoever landed on it got all the money. I always liked the tokens that seemed to be made out of lead in those days. These days I'm sure they are made of plastic as well as the whole game is more than likely made in China or Taiwan. I always used the cannon, which was my favorite token. The racecar was neat too, but if we used that too much, it would cause little grooves on the board from the wheels that didn't turn.

 

Sue always seemed to get all the railroads, Park Place, and Boardwalk! Another of our “house rules” was that we could put unlimited hotels on our properties. Since Sue usually had multiple Hotels on the aforementioned properties, when we landed on one of them, we owed her thousands of dollars! Fortunately, another one of our “house rules” was that we could develop an unlimited deficient. (Hey, it works for the Federal Government). On occasion, MY deficit was more than likely higher than the National one! I would have made a great Liberal Democrat but even if I wanted to (which I never would), I couldn't qualify because my parents were married. J  I usually tried to be the “banker” and when I owed Sue thousands, I would try to rob the bank. I always was caught! Even if I had robbed the bank undetected, the only place I could spend the money was either during the game, or at Parker Brothers. On several occasions, the bank didn't have any money left because Sue had it all! I usually bought Baltic Avenue and Mediterranean Avenue because no body else wanted them. I never made much money, but at least I owned SOME property. Until I had to surrender it to Sue. It never bothered me to be A “Slum Lord”.

 

Tim and Sue always had all their money stacked in neat rows half under the board by denomination. I, on the other hand, had all my money in a heap and all mixed up. I think the main rational for this was that I was paying so much of it to Sue on every roll of the dice, that I didn't have time to make neat stacks since I never had it that long.  Sue always secretly stashed extra money under the card table and when we thought we had finally drained her dry (only Very EARLY in the game), she would reveal a handful of $500 bills! I always wondered if she had a secret printing press to make counterfeit monopoly money!

 

One of the few "official rules" we followed was that if any of us threw three “doubles” in a row, we had to go to jail, which is a strange reward for being lucky in the first place. Since we had to pay $50 to get out or lose three turns, I usually stayed in jail because I couldn’t afford the $50 to get out. At least I got to know the warden by his first name. He looked just like the guy with the mustache who was on all the orange “Chance” and yellow “Community Chest” cards. Another reason was that it was three less turns before I invariably landed on one of Sue’s holdings and had to run up my deficit another few thousand dollars. Sometimes Sue would “make a deal” and instead of adding the thousands of dollars to my deficit, she would forgive the debt for a trade of all my property. I always took her offer and after I lost ALL my properties, my deficit soared! The only source of income I had then, other than the $200 I got for passing go, were the slums of Mediterranean and Baltic Avenues before she got them from me. She usually didn’t want them since they were “small potatoes” to her and I also think that she didn’t want to go into the slums. At least I had some meager money coming in. It was discouraging that whenever I passed Go that after a while SUE got her money from the bank and I never had the chance to at least hand it to her! Of course, after the game, with Sue being richer than Bill Gates, all debts were forgiven until the next game when I started the deficit all over again. During the games, I usually threatened to "rob the bank" at squirt gun point, but since I owed so much to Sue, I doubt even that wouldn't have begun to pay all of my debts to her. After the games, Tim and I returned to our usual destructive pursuits. At least everyone had a brief reprieve while Tim and I were losing money!

 

One of these days, I've been thinking of getting the computer version of Monopoly since it's been years since I've played it. I'm sure there will be several levels that the computer version can be played on. The levels would start at the very basic easy to win simplest level all the way up to the top most challenging level that would probably be called the "Sue" level. Even if I would choose the lowest and easiest game to beat the computer and win level, I'm sure I would lose that one too! Since it's a computer version, it's no doubt set up so I can just have all my rent payments directly deposited into Sue's Monopoly bank account. Some things never change!