When you have kids, you end up never having all the pieces of your games and playing cards in the right place at the right time.
I grew up playing games with my family, so having several decks of cards and many different kinds of board games is not unusual. And, when it was just Lynda and myself, everything was fine. Sure, we had no one to actually play cards or board games with, but we were confident that we could locate all the necessary pieces, dice, face cards, dominos, instruction booklets, and timers any old time we wanted--especially when we had the chance to drug a friend, kidnap them to our domicile, and force them to play with us.
Now, with kids, we no longer look at our game-playing opportunities with confidence. There have been too many opportunities for cards to go missing--either because they played but didn't put away or because they were creating some sort of Frankenstein monster card deck that only they understood, or really, who can guess the mind of the child?
So, anyway, tonight I waded into the card drawers in our bookshelves, to assess the extent of the damage. I found about three old decks that were short 3 to 5 cards each, so out they go with the trash. I also found an old UNO deck that I suspect is missing about twenty or so cards, but I didn't throw them away--either because I'm not sure how many cards are actually found in an UNO deck (my mind keeps telling me 108, but I haven't verified that yet) or because I believe that you can probably play UNO with less than a full deck.
I also reunited HIT THE DECK and SKIP-BO cards that had strayed from their box mates, hopefully ensuring that they can live to be played another day. Additionally, I found some SLEEPING QUEENS cards and some CANDYLAND cards that had snuck away in some past night.
On the good side of things, I did ensure that four decks of cards were intact and still playable. I didn't put them under lock and key. Only time will tell if leaving them open to childhood attack is a poor decision.
(In case you're wondering, the pictures are patterns created after various games of family dominos. I've been collecting them--for no reason at all--for the last month and a half and they seemed a natural illustration style to go with the content of this post.)
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