I was an only child for over 8 years, until my little brother was born. I had, however, two cousins of my age and whenever we would get to family meetings, they would tend to bring board games. Being mostly an only child, i didn't have board games so i love it when we had those family meetings.
Visit at grandma
We would go at my grandmother, every Saturday, at 7 pm. That was a given, every single week, however, my cousins would only come every two or three weeks.
Games to play
One game they would bring is the Game of Life. I liked that game but rarely won. Maybe because they would have more experience in playing and new a few strategies.
Visit at great-grandma
Just a few times a year, we would have larger family gatherings at my great-grandma. It could be on New Year's Eve or at harvest time, or maybe at Thanksgiving. Whenever a lot of us would gather, there was a chance my two cousins would also be present, and hopefully bring a board game!
Stop Thief
One year, my cousins brought a brand new game they had received: Stop Thief. That was very different for a board game. To me, it was quite a high tech game, using a handheld "computer" to play sounds, and a completely different kind of game from the traditional way to play with dice.
I know that the Game of Life is still available now, but Stop Thief is now more of a collectible game that can be purchased on eBay or Amazon but not in stores.
Do you have some memories of games you played when you were a kid whether they are social games, board games or particular toys? Share your stories in the comments below.
2 thoughts on “Remember when…? – Board games”
I remember I was pretty bad at Scrabble because I kept losing. When I finally won one game, after many tries, my friend announced she wouldn’t play anymore. Turns out she was a really bad loser. Had I known that would happen, I would have thrown the game to her. I didn’t care much one way or the other. My brother and I tried to play chess but we couldn’t figure out how to get to checkmate (guess neither one of us would get into Mensa). We seemed to always end in a stalemate. To this day I can’t play that game, but I remember using the chess pieces to tell stories with. I was pretty good at checkers and Chinese checkers. When I was by myself, I liked making designs out of the marbles on the Chinese checker board. Oh, I did have a Barbie game where the goal was to win a date. You can be sure my brother wouldn’t go anywhere near that one!
When I was quite young my mother did a music course in London which required her to be away from home one evening a week. As my father was a shift worker, my grandmother and uncle used to babysit me and my sister when he was working. When they came they brought us comic books and different types of licorice (straps, Catherine wheels and so on) and we would play a board game called Ludo. This was a very simple board game, just right for our young age. I’m not sure if it is still available but I have very fond memories of those evenings.