Should've Known Better

If I would operate under the premise that my wife knows what the hell she's doing, my life would be a lot easier and less of frustration at times. But I don't, so I blog.

Yesterday afternoon, I turned off the TV. The girls were home from school and had spent about an hour unwinding in front of the boob tube when I decided to be proactive and initiate a little daddy-daughters time. I went to the "game closet", which is actually a free-for-all junk closet where we happen to keep all of our board games, to see what we could play together. As I scanned the stacks of games, my eyes fell on a small tin box that I've never seen, or noticed, before. It was a Cranium card game called Matching Madness. I browsed the directions and it looked like it could be fun, so I took it out to the girls to see what they thought. Their faces brightened as I asked them if they had played the game before. "Yeah, we played it with Mommy. It's REALLY FUN."

Cool! Looks like we have a winner, I thought as we settled in on the floor for a game. Kyra gave me the rundown of the rules of the game as I shuffled the deck of cards, only her version of the rules were COMPLETELY different than the rules I recently read. Being the law and rule-abiding citizen I am, I reinstructed the girls on the rules of the game. Matching Madness was designed to be a fast-paced card game where the first person to play their card is the winner. The way the girls played the game with their Mommy took the fast pace, the very competition, out of the game. Mommy is not an idiot. Daddy is. Mommy understands that the girls don't compete well with one another. Daddy also understands this, but chooses to ignore that little tidbit of information.

So the game begins. Kyra, being the youngest and slowest on the draw, is getting slaughtered and is NOT having fun. I kept trying to encourage her not to give up and reminded her this was a GAME and that we were trying to have FUN. I then threw a bunch of hands so that Kyra could win. She won a couple of hands but was still in full pout mode when we came to a hand where Kailey had run out of a color that was in play. "I don't have any yellow!" she cried and then fled from the room, bawling her head off.

FOR THE LOVE OF MIKE WE'RE DOING THIS TO HAVE FRICKITY-FRICK-FRACK DADDY-DAUGHTERS TIME SO GET YOUR WHINEY BUTTS BACK IN HERE STOP YOUR POUTING AND CRYING AND LET'S PLAY THIS STUPID STINKING GAME AND HAVE SOME ZIPPIDY-DO-DA FUN!!

Thankfully, I was able to contain that little outburst to confines of my head (a slightly altered version to what was actually going on there), and I coaxed Kailey back into the room and promised them that we would scrap our current game, the way the game SHOULD be played, and play it Mommy's way. But the damage been done, and Matching Madness was a goner, going up in flames. So to make it up to them I agreed to play my favorite game in the whole wide world, Hide-n-Seek.

Incidentally, Cranium no longer makes Matching Madness. It's not listed on their website, it's not available in any online toy stores that I could find, and the only link I could find for it was on eBay (did you notice?)...for $3. Shocker. Stupid, piece of crap game. I'd much rather place the blame on the game and not on the fact that I overlooked the temperament of my girls and the ferocity of their sibling rivalry. Truth is, we need to place Cranium's Matching Madness back on the shelf of the "game closet" and let it gather dust there until the girls are emotionally mature enough to handle losing to one another. Because I just can't bring myself to play it Mommy's way.