Old traditions with new people II

I did not realize it until the game was about 3/4 over, but I did participate in another Modine family ritual last night. This time it was playing Monopoly on Christmas Eve, starting late at night and ending early on Christmas morning. My opponents were the two oldest children--one girl and one boy--of one of my faculty colleagues, who had never played Monopoly before. So I was teaching them how to do it as they went along.

My brother's strategy of collecting the railroads and the utilities ultimately paid off for the girl, the eventual winner of the game. I had bought and/or traded for three of the railroads and I had both utilities. I was offering the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars to the girl for the fourth railroad, but she was very stubborn. Eventually I made a blunder and offered her the three railroads and both utilities for the two properties I needed to completely own Second Street, except of course for the Electric Company. She accepted this, and then both I and her brother immediately began landing on the railroads and the utilities every time we went around the board. Of course, she also always missed the magentas and the oranges on Second Street, usually taking a ride on her own Pennsylvania Railroad or visiting the power substation, if she did not fly past the street all together with boxcars on the dice. Her brother, initially out into a commanding lead with both sets of blue properties (though he never improved Boardwalk and Park Place), soon had to demolish the houses he had on First Street since he kept landing on the railroads owned by his sister.

I kept advising her when to build on Third Street, which she owned entirely except for the Chance square in between Indiana and Kentucky Avenues. I kept saying, "Well, here we come around the corner and you probably will miss my orange guys over here. Even if you hit them, it won't cost you much money." For I never had more than two houses on either the orange or the magenta properties on Second Street. I avoided a usual mistake in building too quickly, but I fell victim to another usual blunder, like I said, and made a devastatingly bad trade. I do not think she ever landed on the oranges, though she did hit the magentas a few times.

Soon enough, and mainly because I was getting tired, I conceded, tore down the houses I had left, gave the unimproved properties to the boy, and encouraged him to quit as well. By this time he had mortgaged the greens, the dark blues, and all of the light blues except Connecticut Avenue. But he refused to concede. Then I advised the girl to shell out $900 and put hotels all along Third Street. I kept calling it the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but she insisted on the much prettier name of Marigold Street. Anyhow, I instituted a lightning round, because I wanted it to be over so I could go home and go to bed, since I was due to talk to the family at 8:00 AM and it was already past midnight. The seminary president came along a couple of times to observe the carnage, and I said again that it shouldn't be long before the boy was bankrupt. During the lightning round, he hit the Free Parking lottery (not in the official rules, but whatever), but he landed on one of the reds the next turn, and then Ventor Avenue the turn after that. And that was it.

All told, the girl owned the purples (which her brother hit a couple of times), the utilities, the railroads, the reds, and the yellows. She even gave him some grace a couple of times when he hit her stuff. She never offered this grace to me, and I wouldn't have accepted it anyway, because I wanted to lose and get it over already. It truly was a dominating performance, especially since she came back from a cash-poor position early on. It was a stroke of luck that she landed on Atlantic Avenue (the last unclaimed lot to be purchased), and it was my error to trade everything away for Second Street.

Maybe someday I'll learn how to play Monopoly.