Does Not Play Well With Others

When Nigel approached me last weekend at the annual Tarts and Vickers party to ask me if I wanted to participate in a game with the rest of the group, I was suddenly debilitated by a twitch in my left eye. I summoned my driver, Worthington, and he whisked me home to my oxygen tank, where I gulped for my life.

I grew up playing games. I played Monopoly, Sorry, Chutes and Ladders, and all those board games with other children. As I grew into adolescence, I played Canasta, Spite and Malice, Boggle, Scrabble and other brainy games with my mother.

When I was in high school and college, I competed in track and volleyball. I continued to play competitive volleyball indoors as well as on the beach in Southern California until after 20 years, my shoulder said, "Okay, that's enough for you, pal. You can sit out the rest of this one."

All this boring-ass history of my game-playing to demonstrate two things:
1. I am not afraid to play games.
2. After all those years of playing and learning how important it is to play by the rules, I'm competitive and anal as hell.

This is why party games are EPIC FAIL for me. It's not that I can't stand to lose. I've ridden that bus so many times, I have a lifetime pass. It's that I can't stand cheaters. I can't relax and enjoy myself if people are drunk and cheating and winning unfairly. They think they are just goofing off and who cares who wins and they just want to have fun. I call it breaking the rules. And anybody who has the audacity at this moment to interject with the asinine "but rules were made to be broken" has seen too many movies and does not value their nose bones.

I fly off the handle - internally, of course - if someone talks out of turn during Pictionary. You have to DRAW the picture. You can't TALK when you draw the picture. It says so in the rules. Your team is supposed to LOSE if you talk while you draw the picture! And yet, nobody else seems to care. Meanwhile, my adrenaline is inducing a cornary in my veins as I bite my tongue about the unfairness of it all.

"Stop it!" I want to scream. "Stop it, all of you! You're nothing but a bunch of anarchists, barbarians and game heathens!"

No, if you ask me to play anything with you involving a group of people, it is best if I just go watch the fireplace while everyone squeals in delight in the other room.

Also? No, I will not be your ringer for your volleyball team at your picnic on Sunday. You are a bunch of booze hounds who stand around on the court with fifteen people on each side, throwing the volleyball back and forth over the net with no referees to call major illegal ball handling every three seconds. You've got a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. You are not playing volleyball. You are playing some bastardized version of kindergarten soccer and you have no goals. Or rules.

I must have rules, people! I must have order. I must have rigid lines to follow and I will not tolerate disrespectors who stray from them. Otherwise, you know...I'm not going to have fun.