Essay Experiment #15: Monopoly Problems--#52essays2017

Let's talk about monopoly.

Wait, don't leave.

It is not as boring as you fear.

It's (even) more boring, more, more, more.

But so is breathing, right? And few quit that earlier than they have to.

Hey, anyway, the board is already set up. Clean piles of money. And you? You are a good parent, invested in the interests of your children. They don't want to read your books on dark money or addiction memoirs that end in water or breastfeeding either, m'kay? They find those tedious. And so you find yourself on the floor, shins crossed, wishing the game would vanish inexplicably.

Monopoly.

The plot and purpose and structure are: You go around and around in circles and buy shit and hope people land on your property so you can charge them for shit.

I have never on purpose wanted to have something so someone else couldn't have it, but I may have done so accidentally because: whiteness.

I wonder if Monopoly is a white person's game.

So let's start like this. After 5 hours on a Saturday morning with my toddler and my 10 year-old (while my 12 year-old was off at a gaming store in midtown Manhattan, exploring his new freedom to be only with peers in someone else's monopoly, and his ad hoc social life) my toddler fell asleep. This only happens if you try to put his pants on to go outside, he has a fit and falls asleep because: pants.

He basically has clothing narcolepsy.

So facing an aborted trip to the park and with a bright hour to myself to write ohmygodmygodohmygod I vie for sainthood and instead ask my 10 year old if he wants to play a game.

Now, he is fun to play games with and my stepsons have a towering pile of real games in their rooms that don't get played with enough, games with pieces that you could for example lose because: don't give enough of a shit about stuff. He has strategy and is just growing out of changing the rules when he's losing, a phase I am glad to be almost maybe next week done with.

However, what does he come back with? Connect 4 and Monopoly. Connect 4 is the back up plan. I love Connect 4. But, alas. Monopoly is the plan. And I must be vying for Sainthood because I said OK great let's play as I felt giant tears of boredom trickle from the armpit of my soul, if you will.

Now before you canonize me, please know that because my baby only takes long naps when, say, I have to be somewhere important and have no help, I knew there was no way this game would last more than an hour and a half because he would wake up and throw pieces everywhere and rub the money around and done.

Sorry, toddler tornados everywhere destroy valuable wastes of time.

So, spoiler alert: Yup, Monopoly is just as boring as I remember.

You basically go in circles and buy stuff until you go bankrupt and then you keep buying stuff because this is America. You gotta keep up with the Joneses and the Rodriguez's and the Trumps. Did I say that? And the system has all kinds of ways to help you go into debt because: capitalism and economic oppression.

Aren't credit cards a miracle of geometry? So thin you could pick a lock with them, yet so thick with narrative.  The foundation for a tower of loss from which you can grow and grow your hair but will never get out without a collection agency stabbing you in the back. Rumple-monthly-statements-kin, or some such mythical creature that hounds and hounds. 

Then you have to hope people roll the dice and land on your shit because if they lose you win hence capitalism hence whiteness and hence: acquisition.

You buy shit you don't want and maybe can't afford and definitely don't need--just so someone else can't have it.

You spend time thinking how you can get that golden 500 bill out of the bank without anyone seeing.

The banker, if you're playing with kids, has to be Not You. Your opponent who is forgetful pretends to forget what denomination bill you gave him and gives you wrong change, too little. They call this cheating but let's be real, the real bank is always taking more than its share. Cheating is contagious.  Every time you stroke an ATM, a bit of that value is spat into the culture with your withdrawal.

In fact, it is a known that Monopoly bankers cheat. Conflict of interest and the allure is too great. It is almost a job description. An ethical banker ruins the ambiguous, seedierthanwebelieveweare human element. But more importantly, there is nothing else to do. So cheating adds that essential spark of strategy and adrenaline that makes a game a game. Not that I've ever cheated voraciously at monopoly. You gotta take what you can when you can.

Most people have cheated or thieved in some way off-board, too, but called it something else. I also stole extra hospital underwear after childbirth just because. It felt good to leave with more than I went in with--hence: capitalism. It would take months, more than a year, for the hospital to send all the bills. They were staggeringly high and each one had a perplexing itemization for everylittlefuckingthing. The ferry of debt is the last one to leave. You never just missed it.

But those hospital gauzy chucks --Made me feel like I had really GOTTEN something out of the experience, you know?  I'm still sad I wore through them all and had nothing to show for my trip.  

Speaking of trips, let's talk about Monopoly, those tiny silver shiny game pieces. A crisp shopping bag, a compact iron, a little lap dog? Urbanity? Icons of Affluence? Oddly, in the older version, a thimble? The only person I'd ever seen use a thimble in my real life is my grandmother, who repaired clothing and made doilies. Doilies. But she comes later in the essay, and never personally purchased anything beyond household items, all the banking in her husband's name, hence patriarchy. 

You pay Monopoly taxes not based on any fiscal calendar but randomly. Often just when you have nothing else left to draw on. Like, say, sex after a newborn. When the bank has collected on your misfortune, then the IRS comes along and says: me too.

And then, JAIL. In my opinion monopoly jail is a little harsh and always feels like a non-sequitur. What have I done to deserve this, the poor inmate might ask. Well, that's not the point, friend. 

[Would it be much better if Monopoly involved obligatory corporal punishment for unethical behaviors? If you were too greedy, or caught cheating, instead of temporary imprisonment, the other players delivered you shocks, minor but aggravating paper-cuts with your property deeds, you had to put your face down to the ground and grovel, "I WILL NOT TAKE MORE THAN WHAT IS MINE, I WILL NOT TAKE MORE THAN WHAT IS MINE." Because: more. Because: no. Because: limits.]
Jail serves only as a lull in an otherwise deadly boring game, and nothing bad happens to you there except missing a turn. Which is a myth about jail in real life, too. But maybe not white collar jail. That actually might be a bit more like: missing your turn to buy shit, while spending your time in a clean square room, with three square meals a day and WIFI, a space from which you will soon be released with no other consequential change in circumstance-- except maybe a new job title.

You acquire. The more you acquire the more you want to acquire because: more.

You have deeds for your property laid out in front of you. You can keep constant tabs on what and how much and did you just land on something I own? Excellent, excellent.

But, let's be real. What you own is 2" by 3" inches on a foldable board.

But, more.

So let's talk about how this is like life, shall we? We set up the board and agree to the rules. There are 2 piles for chance events, opportunities that can randomly improve or degrade your circumstances. Like, oops, ran up a wine tab at the bar or, oops, invested in the wrong arm of my business and owe IRS back-taxes. This kind of normal shit. Occasionally you get the monopoly version of finding a twenty in your winter coat pocket. That happens too, m'kay?

But I noticed that there is no love on the monopoly board, though. Did you? Not even the chance events of grandpa mailing you a crisp folded ten on your birthday. (He doesn't know $10 only buys you half of anything you actually want).  

And by the way, speaking of real  people: after my grandma died my grandpa sent the next birthday card from both of them. I wasn't sure if he did it on purpose or by accident. But the year after that, he didn't sign it from both. I don't know if he did it on purpose or by accident, but each tiny signature cleaved my heart in half. Both cards expressed the minutiae of grief and loss amidst trying to go on. But you didn't want to hear about my grandparents.

No emotions on the board, nary a one. Fitting, because no one can have a monopoly on those, not even if you own all the property in the world, and every single dollar. The 1% are not 99% more affective-rich. By converse, you can't pay a mortgage with compassion.

So you buy and buy and buy and build and build and build incrementally upping your rent costs. You gloat when the dice deliver players to your properties--as if you have done something special, been someone special, to have all this. And yet I repeat: capitalism. Capitalism really has your back, you louse.

But the thing is: dice are random. Someone lands on things you own if the dice tell them to. And as you buy up the board, it is more and more likely you will be owed, and more and more likely others will have nothing to pay you with. Because: whiteness. No, I didn't mean that. Because: monopoly.

But that's it. Do you follow me? Nothing but purchase power, no beautiful insights or mental maps. No peaked cognition, no self reliance, no strategic plan or think tank, no, no mentors, no trailblazers, no. And when you get done with all your "no's" you just get = capitalism, the fib of eternal yes, endless resources, and pathetic individualism.

But the ten year old is winning, and worse than playing monopoly is slowly losing at monopoly. He doesn't even look that thrilled with himself which either means he is becoming an adult or the game is absurdly boring and takes way too long (to get out of).

In this way it is like...poverty?

My husband and I talked about taking a vow of poverty because at least then it would look like this was all on purpose. The phrase is ennobling. It doesn't at all sound like you are still paying off a tremendous credit card balance from when you left your conflictaddicted ex and lived out of your car and faked normalcy for your children, one meal at a time. Not that.

Suddenly, like a life raft, I hear the toddler yelling, and I am snatched from an abyss of monoboredom. I am so bored I can't even listen well to the podcast we have agreed to have on--Myths & Legends, Oedipus. Interesting thing to listen to with a stepson whose relationship with his mom is mighty enmeshed but: another essay.

I AWAKE!! The toddler calls.

Exactly what I wish to feel. I AWAKE, he says, liking his own sound, hearing us laugh because: healthy ego formation.

The 10 year-old and I run in to get the toddler and I tell the older one to be prepared for the game to be ruined and I try to sound sad about it.

The 10 year-old jumps on the toddler and they do whacky flips on the bed and the 10 year-old has agreeably walked away from a situation where he + minor cheating was beating me senseless. I was about to become a monk, begging for supper of a few rice grains and lotus flowers. So this is the real sign that the game is death by boredom. Doesn't the winner always gloat?

Well, not in love.

And then the toddler comes in with us and sees the board and his sense of life purpose goes through the roof. He doubles in size and strength over the six steps it takes him to get from the door to the game. With both hands and both feet and a glorious shriek, he wrecks the system, with no sense of boring or order, hence: parenthood. Hence: instinct. Hence: all our systems are temporary, honey. 

So sell me your boardwalk, quick, side deal, and sell it to me for way too little, say, just my undying affection. In the vastest sense you have nothing to lose. Or that's what I will tell you as I scoop you up and we shake on the shitty deal. As I fold you into my arms and the ceiling fan blows away what was left of the bank's kitty. Most of it is under the couch and will stay there because: I have kids. Because: love. Because: capitalism must have at least one opponent. Because, monopoly problems. Or just because.