The Pink Shoe Diaries

You may not know this by looking at me, but I like to play games.

Board games, that is.

Growing up, my parents were very anti-TV. In fact from the last day of school in June until it the first day of school in Septemver, the TV was turned off in our household. For this reason, while other kids looked feverishly towards summer vacation, my brother and I regarded it with a mix of excitement and as well as a mild sense of loss. Oh how we loved TV.

The advent of No TV Season brought with it the advent of a few other Seasons. Summer Camp Season. Day Trip Season. Daily Jaunts to the Library Season, and of course, FAMILY GAME NIGHT Season.

We had in our arsenal a collection of board games to rival K-B Toys. Trivial Pursuit, Quick Wit, Battleship, Clue, Sorry, Mouse Trap, and Life (to name a few). The teams were usually my dad and I vs my mother and my brother and thus began (no offense to my brother and mother!) my love affair with WINNING. You see, my dad and I? We win the games. I was never particularly athletic or into any competitive sport other than kickball, but on the board I learned the art of kicking ass and let me tell you, It suited me.

And even now as an adult I love board games. In my single days. My friend Jill and I would come home from a night out clubbing, change into our PJs, pour ourselves another cocktail and start a late night game of Trivial Pursuit. Her roommate and roomate’s boyfriend would sometimes join us and these tournaments would go late into the night, equally as likely to end in fits of laughter or fisticuffs over an answer that was So Close but Not Quite.

Which brings me to the flip side of loving to win. Which is, of course, hating to lose.

Luckily I got to indulge my game loving a whole lot this weekend. On Friday night my friend Diana had a bunch of us over for wine and Trivial Pursuit. This DVD version is lethal because when you are trying for a pie piece, if you don't get the answer within the first 10 seconds than the other teams can shout out the answer and steal your piece. I love this feature beacuse of it's "in your face" quality....but I must say I hate it when it is in MY face. It was a lot of fun though.

Then on Saturday was a NEW kind of game. My cousin hosted a Murder Mystery Dinner Party. I had heard of these, but never attended one. When we got the invitations a month ago, in it was the name of the character we would be playing, and a brief description of that character as well as of the scene of the mystery. Ours took place on a train leaving Paris as the German troops were invading. My character was Belinda, American socialite/fashion designer and malicious gossip, while Adam was simply "The Duke". We dressed up (me in black dress and fox stole, Adam in pinstripe pants and a blue oxford) and arrived fashionaly late in time to hear about who had been murdered (an international spy named Fiona) and begin the game.

Basically every guest/character gets a booklet specific to the character they are playing, and each page represents a Round and has a "Conceal" and "Reveal" section. So in Round one I my "Conceal" was that I had killed my partner (which means I was not to VOLUNTEER the info but if someone asked me point blank if I killed someone I could not lie) and my "Reveal" was about some book I was writing on the rich and powerful in Paris. And so on and so forth. So with each round you learn more about yourself, more about the other characters and you also have an opportunity to grill everyone and try and get them to reveal their secrets.

Plus as the wine/beer flowed people got more and more into it. In the beginning there was talk of "a mysterious man with an extravagant mustache" and by the end of the night people (and by people I mean Adam) were referring to him as "that bastard with the fabulous mustache!.

In the end, the person who WAS the murderer is the one who figured it out and I was a tad dissapointed..not because I wanted to solve the mystery but because I had been hoping I was the killer (Fiona sounded REAL annoying). It was a really fun night, and Adam and I plan on buying our own kit and throwing a murder ourselves some night soon.