It’s like a tree stump in your gut.
Like someone has shoved a great big boxing glove down your throat and is punching you from the inside of your stomach.
It’s kind of like one of those sandworms from the movie Dune is eating its way out through your belly button.
Losing at Monopoly is an excruciating thing.
I’m not talking about having lost – when it’s all over and you’re packing up the board – but sitting in front of a fifty and a couple of fivers, with all your properties mortgaged and glaring red hotels on everyone else’s squares.
This is probably one of the most depressing moments of anyone’s, of any age’s, life.
You shake the dice like a schoolboy in the bushes watching the girls’ netball practice, mumbling the number you need to land on Community Chest or Water Board, closing your eyes as they bounce across the Free Parking money, only to be one move away from another round’s respite.
Landing on your soon-to-be-ex girlfriend’s Eloff Street, you’ve got to fork out what might as well be a hundred billion Rand and the freshly-plucked hairs from the inside of your left ear.
You know you can’t come up with the money, but you look glumly from side-to-side at your lot as though there’s a pile of hundreds you might’ve missed.
Oh, ha ha, it’s just a game, the winners always say; but then why does it feel so kak to lose at Monopoly? It’s not a poker game with real cash! Sure, it might be worth more than Zim Dollars, but you can’t buy as much as a night with a Wynberg Main Road Tranny with it – believe me, I’ve tried.
Robert Kawasaki – or whatever the ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ guy’s name is – says you should play Monopoly with your kids a lot because it teaches them how to manage money and ruthlessly fuck over their friends. I played my fair share of Monopoly as a kid and it didn’t do squat – I’m terrible with money!
I think it’s so depressing because being on the Monopoly skids feels real!
It brings back those memories of emptying your piggy bank to buy a loaf of bread and a tin of sweetcorn for dinner, scrounging through jacket pockets for coins to buy a couple of single cigarettes at the corner café, and closing your bank account to get the last R50 so you can buy booze and a piece of rope to get pissed and hang yourself.
It’s a terrible toy; designed to make you feel like a loser.
I always preferred the Mad Magazine Game, the point of which was to lose all your money… funnily enough, I was always very good at that.
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