I Wonder How Trump Handles Losing High Stakes Board Games

Take a Ride on the B&O Railroad

Dad couldn’t stand to lose, even though it was a silly board game based on luck. It centered around Real Estate, which was Dad’s area of expertise. He had been a bank manager but switched to real estate in his late 30s.

While making a reputation for himself, he didn’t miss a possible market during a time, years before computers, when marketing meant advertising in the church bulletin or the local newspaper, cold calling, and knocking on people’s doors.

Dad volunteered at the Catholic church our family attended. He also joined one of those fraternal businessmen organizations, like Kiwanis, and he demanded my mom join the equivalent group for wives. Dad worked for his friend who had a good reputation, then became a real estate broker and started his own company.

Our family struggled for a few years while all these changes were happening. We moved to a less affluent middle-class neighborhood where many of Dad’s church buddies lived. My siblings and I switched from Catholic school to public school. Otherwise, Dad’s career shift didn’t impact my life or the life of my siblings.

I take that back. One of my sisters made the school transition in her junior year of high school and had to make a new set of friends as a teenager. I was only in the 4th grade and got in an equal amount of trouble in public as in private school.

Dad took his real estate course and got his license in another town. I think he went to Bakersfield or LA for a few months, returning on weekends until he passed his test.

It was a confusing time. My parents never talked with us kids about what was happening.

It was after Dad shifted careers, he started getting uptight about playing Monopoly. He had never taken the board game seriously. He was fine, being as competitive as the rest of the family.

But suddenly Monopoly became some measure of Dad’s worth. He was irritable when playing the game and seemed to get especially mad when anyone, besides himself, landed on and bought the two highest-paying rental properties on the board — Park Place and Boardwalk. It was okay if Dad could amass wealth by buying up other less prestigious properties, but if he was in a run of bad luck — watch out.

He would abruptly get up, say he was sick of the dumb game, throw down whatever was in his hand — cards, money, red or green plastic houses or hotels — and exit the family room, leaving most of his cash neatly tucked under the board, and disrupting everyone else’s fun.

Momentarily.

Mom sometimes got up to comfort Dad by mixing him a gin and tonic. The rest of us kept playing Monopoly. We would throw dice to see who got to abscond Dad’s property or the remainder of his cash.

That person usually got enough money and property to stay in the game until the end.

Dad couldn’t resist strolling back through the room where all the kids, and sometimes Mom were sitting on our big family room rug still engaged in Monopoly. He loved to comment and predict who would win and who would be the biggest loser.

He couldn’t resist. He wasn’t always right.

Dad never got over his reaction to losing at Monopoly. Each time the whole family sat down to play, he’d say, I think I’ve figured out a surefire way to dominate the game. Each time things started looking grim he exited the game, sometimes he said the game was rigged.

He had no problem with other board games. He didn’t have so much at stake and could hold another game lightly.

Maybe I have come to hate word games for a similar reason. I don’t find it entertaining to create words for maximum points. It seems like work rather than a game. I always opt out except for Bananagrams which seems sufficiently silly. I could care less about my performance.

In the end, I prefer games centered around activities like charades.

It’s harder to get a bruised ego in that game.