Escapism

Wow, I totally did not intend to be controversial with yesterday's post. It's amazing to me how much judgment there is in the world of wedding planning. Ultimately, I think the reason why a lot of people feel the need to qualify their explanations of their wedding is because they're afraid that it will sound like their guests did not enjoy themselves.

And you know? It is a lot of pressure. Even if you only spend $5,000 on your wedding, you're still organizing what is essentially the biggest party you've ever thrown, with all the people you care about most in the world as the guests. You're spending a lot of money to do it and the guests are spending time and money to be there with you.

So yeah, it's your day in that you are the reason that everyone is there, and you called all the shots about the type of party it would be, but it's not your day in that the big worry is that everyone who made an effort to be with there should enjoy themselves. I think that's the common worry of every person planning a wedding, even Bridezilla types. And I think that yesterday's comments said it best: As long as the bride and groom enjoy themselves, the guests will as well.

In other news, some college friends and I are planning a weekend in the country as a mini-reunion, and I am so, so excited about it. Yesterday I was talking to one of the friends, and we got to discussing board games and how fun it's going to be to play them together, and that made me realize something a little bit tragic: Torsten and I hardly ever play board games. I grew up playing board games, and I still love them. Monopoly is one of my favorites, and I collect different editions, like my French Toulouse edition from when I lived there, and Millennium Monopoly, and Retro Monopoly. But Torsten doesn't like Monopoly, so we never play it.

The real problem is that we have very different taste in games. Even though I grew up on mostly Ravensburger games, like Snail's Pace Race, Amazing Labyrinth, and Enchanted Forest, and Ravensburger is German, Torsten isn't a fan of most of their games. A year or so ago we went to a nearby toy store and bought a few games to play together, but some of them are still unopened, and the ones we have opened we've barely played.

I get very competitive; I like to win. Even now that we have a Wii, I get frustrated not because I suck but because I suck more than Torsten, even though the games are new to both of us. Never mind that he has years of gaming experience and I've only ever played Tetris. I hate striking out against him in baseball and causing us to lose by dying five times in a row when we play collaborative Geometry Wars. It drives me NUTS and then I get all grumpy and don't want to play anymore.

And the games I'm good at, he isn't. Word games give me an unfair advantage because I know all sorts of obscure words that he, as a non-native English speaker, couldn't be expected to know. Boggle is like a joke, and he gets frustrated playing against me (although at least we share a common trait in how competitive we are). We both like Trivial Pursuit, but it's very biased toward the country it's sold in, although Torsten does know the odd piece of European history that I would never get.

Also, I LOVE card games and Torsten totally does not. He finds them tedious and pointless, and so we never play them, which is another HUGE tragedy. Solitaire just doesn't pack the same punch, you know?

But I MISS games. I miss canasta and rummy and Monopoly and Stock Market and all the other games that I played growing up. I was raised on those games, and my family still plays them at holidays and when we all get together. It's WEIRD not playing board games regularly, and the Wii does not exactly fill that void for me.

What about you? What games did you play as a kid? Do you still play games now?