July 12, 2000

This week my wife, Gina, and I are babysitting again. This time we are with our nine-year old granddaughter Jessica and her friend Kaitlyn. We had been just hanging out for a while when the girls decided they wanted to play checkers. Jess and Kaitlyn are playing first and I will play the winner. Kaitlyn won but I think she was a little nervous about playing me so she asked Jess to play against me instead.

I hadn’t played checkers for a very long time so I had no idea how the game would turn out. Jessica gave it her best shot. But she was way over her head with me. A nine-year-old kid is no match for an experienced adult. Jess seemed a little uncomfortable when she realized she had no chance in the game. And she seemed relieved when it was over.

And now it was Kaitlyn’s turn to play me. But she was already trying to back out. I didn’t want another uncomfortable game with Kaitlyn so I began to think how I used to play games of skill with my sons when they were kids. And I remembered how I used a handicap system to make the games fair.

Then I negotiated a deal with Kaitlyn where we would begin our game with Kaitlyn ahead by two checkers. We had a very close game. And Kaitlyn began to see that she had a good chance to win the game so she really focused on her moves. I couldn’t recover from being two checkers down and Kaitlyn finally won the game. Kaitlyn was really happy about the results. But more important, we had a lot of fun and the game was very fair.

I started this handicap system when I bought a pool table for our boys a long time ago. I really enjoy the game of pool. And I thought my boys and I would have a lot of fun with our new game. But my boys had no experience with this new game. And, obviously, my boys had very little skill at playing pool.

My boys loved the new game and we spent a lot of time in the cellar playing pool. But after a while a big problem developed. No matter how we paired the teams my team always won. My oldest boy, Ross, was very sensitive to fair play and he began to realize that his team always lost the game.

One day Ross got fed up with the results of another loss at pool. So he accused me of cheating and stomped up the stairs with his partner. Ross said that he wouldn’t play pool anymore if I was involved in the game.

I started to think how I could make the games fair for all of us. At first I thought about missing some shots on purpose. But that would really be cheating. And the boys would know I was faking it. After some serious negotiating with my boys we came up with our handicap system for playing pool.

We evaluated the pool skills of the boys. And then we assigned a certain number of "time-outs" where a player who missed a shot could call "time-out" and use one of his handicap strokes to try the shot again. The handicap system made the games very fair and the boys enjoyed the game much more. We even expanded our handicap system to any other game that required a skill.

I loved to play outside sports with my boys. But I had very little patience for the inside board games. I would get very frustrated when a player would have to go back wards. Because I knew that it meant a longer game. So I negotiated a rule where no player had to go backwards.

My wife, Gina, was concerned with our boys getting upset when they lost at a board game so she had a rule that changed the focus away from "winning" to "finishing." Gina’s rule called for all the players to complete the game. The game did not stop when one person "won" the game. This rule allowed a player to finish first, second, third or fourth. The boys liked that rule because it gave everyone a chance to win something.

I’ve watched kids playing those video games. And I really don’t like what I see. What I usually see is a child holding on to a trigger and shooting at targets that keep zooming across the screen faster than the child can shoot. The child seems to be under a lot of pressure to pick out the right target and then shoot it before it disappears.

I can see the technical entertainment with the flashing lights and colorful explosions. But I would think the child would be a wreck after an hour of flashing lights, exploding targets and very loud noises assaulting his nervous system. But then, I guess that’s progress.

Our house was a pretty quiet house. And those video games would not have fit in at all—too much noise and way too much shooting.

Our boys spent a lot of time outside with games that were very active and also very loud. Our house was the one in the neighborhood that had the basketball net in the driveway and the hockey net in the garage-- and the neighborhood kids who went with it.

But inside the house we played different kinds of games like candyland, sorry, and trivial pursuit. When Gina and I played board games like candyland we didn’t give any handicap and we played to finish first because these are games of chance and an inexperienced child has as much chance to win as an experienced adult. We also enjoyed putting puzzles together. And my favorite game to play with our boys was checkers.

After we put a pool table in our cellar we added a ping pong game which we put on top of the pool table. And when the kids were bored with playing pool and playing ping pong they would play cards on the ping pong table. For a long time our cellar was a favorite hangout for our boys and the neighborhood kids.

I didn’t worry too much about the kids spilling stuff or getting things dirty in the cellar because I purposely kept the cellar rough and unfinished. The only incident I remember was the night that Ross’s friend, EJ, made his famous ride thru our shrubs.

And as the boys got older they played less with us and more with their friends. So folks your kids are going to play games with you for only a little while. So you might as well make it fair for all and make it fun for all.