Back in the old days when The Piebald Penguin was just a young thing, he and his friends were fond of playing board games. Yes, I admit it. We are nerds. It's true. Ok. Phew. I feel better now that I got that off my chest. Remember though, this was back when multiplayer computer games were still on the cusp of being popular. And none of us had the ability to finance a home network. Sadface (see what I did there? I wrote out an emoticon. What now.) So we played board games together, like Risk and more commonly Axis & Allies. Axis & Allies was a game about strategy combined with a little luck and a lot of time. It usually takes at least fifteen minutes just to set up the board. We would play for an hour or two and then my brother and I would get in an argument about who was the better human being (It's me. You all know it's true. There. I won the argument because he doesn't read my blog so he can't respond. *Evil laughter*). However, before that happened, we would usually have plenty of fun playing the game. One problem with board games, though, is that they are vulnerable to physical disturbances. This includes, but is not limited to, earthquakes, moving bodies, and cats that like to walk across the board. Actually, my cat was usually pretty good at being able to pick her path across the board without knocking anything over. It's really incredible to watch. We kept thinking that she would knock all the pieces over but she typically didn't. All of these disturbances are minor in light of the greatest disturbance of them all...and his name is Spiffinator. He went through a phase in his life where he carried marbles with him. Not just small marbles though...oh no...he always had the really large marbles (destroyers? I think that's what they were called). Several centimeters in diameter. But he wouldn't just play with the marbles around the board. He would toss them into the air directly over the delicately position board and attempt to catch them. If I had to guess, I would say that he caught the marble 9 out of 10 times. Unfortunately for the rest of us, there was always, inevitably, that 10th throw. Guess where it would land. Yep. Right in the middle of the board. It's really disheartening to watch all your carefully placed armies fly off the board. Ironically though it was still really amusing. At some point, we actually came up with a new rule for all our board games. We called it the Spiffinator Effect. If someone knocked over a piece on the board, the owner of that piece was allowed to place an extra piece on the board. Ah, good times with board games.
Now we just play computer games. We don't even have to see each other anymore. It's great. Smiley.
~The Piebald Penguin
