Board Games and LEGOS

But the rest of my family members were somehow allowed to take the class in pre-school.
My husband and my two children can play  some of these new strategy games for hours on a Sunday afternoon.  My son has been known to disappear into the basement with his small plastic building bricks and only come up for food and water.  I know that it is not just my family.  Many mothers have reported the same phenomenon with similarly aged sons and/or husbands. 

There are some members of the female population that have a similar attraction to games of strategy and toys that can be built into new inventions.  My daughter and my sister-in-law are two such females.  I, however, am not.  As soon as the games come out of the cabinet, I go out the door...usually grocery shopping or some other equally thrilling mom adventure.   Sometimes I even go for a jog.  (see my previous post to know how desperate I must be to not play those games)

I think it may stem back to one of the few truly traumatic episodes of my childhood....the everlasting game of Monopoly that my brothers always wanted to play, and win.  Me?   I was more than happy to while away an evening playing Trivial Pursuit where there was always the chance that you could be the lucky player to land on the history pie space and get the question "Who is buried in Grant's Tomb?"  See...isn't that much more fun????  No strategy involved, just dumb luck.

And those little plastic bricks......
We have banned all plastic bricks to the lowest level of the house because I am convinced that if left elsewhere, (under boy's bed, on boy's floor, scattered round the house)  these little monstrosities wander and breed.  That means when you get up to get a drink of water in the middle of the night, you will step on at least 5 of them in your bare feet before you even make it to the bathroom.  Very unpleasant at 2 a.m., in the dark, when you are only half awake.

But I have decided that missing the class does not excuse me from missing my kids enjoy something.  As much as I would really rather be left in a room full of starving pre-schoolers with only one snack baggy of goldfish, than play those games, I have to keep the big picture in mind.   It's really not about me.  I have to get over myself.  My children should be able to have fun and share this with me without my dramatic sighs and procrastination. I should be thankful that they play nicely together and want to spend time with their parents. On the rare occasion that I do play, we usually wind up having conversations about their own little lives and what they are thinking about.  That may not always be the case.  There may come a day when they don't want to talk to me at all, about anything.  That scares me more than the hungry pre-schoolers, as we are nearing those teen-aged years and young adulthood faster than I care to admit.

So my family is going to get to teach me this summer about board games and small plastic bricks, and I am going to shoot for an A in the class.

Because there is more at stake here than just missing the class.