On Friday evening, our 11-year-old daughter, Emma, put down the video-game remote and announced that it was time for us to “play a board game and share our feelings.”
I told Emma it was time for me “to get up from watching the baseball game and get another beer.”
We were approaching the evening from decidedly different directions.
Emma really didn’t want us to share our feelings. She just said she did because she thought it was funny. It was. See, we don’t really share our feelings much at our house. Well, I don’t share my feelings much — unless, of course, I’m sharing my feelings about a holding penalty that a referee just called on a Kansas City Chiefs player who, technically speaking, has been retired for 10 years.
There are a lot of unexplained holding calls in football, is what I’m saying.
But when it comes to telling my wife or Emma how I feel about things, I pretty much let them decipher how I feel by what I say. For example, if I’m hot, I will say, “I am hot.” If I’m mad, I will say, “Boy, that makes me mad.” And if I am mad at my wife, I will say, “That gosh-darn Obama.”
Hey, Obama is married. He understands.
But even a closed-off, baseball-watching, beer-drinking dad knows when it’s time to turn off the TV and face the board-game music. So on Friday evening, I turned off the TV.
“What game do you want to play?” I asked Emma.
“Pretty Princess,” Emma said.
“Oh *&^%,” I said.
Clearly, Emma had set a trap, and I walked right into it. See, Pretty Princess is a game Emma got for Christmas many years ago. As games go, Pretty Princess is fairly simple. You spin a little dial and move a game piece around the board trying to land on pictures of jewelry. If you land on a picture of a piece of jewelry, you get to collect that piece from the special jewelry box. The first person to collect all the jewelry, including a special crown, wins. The catch is, after you collect a piece of jewelry, you must wear that piece of jewelry.
I decided it was time to share my feelings with Emma.
“I don’t want to do that,” is how I shared my feelings.
“Tough. You’re playing,” is how Emma shared her feelings.
Twenty minutes later, I was wearing a crown, one earring, a necklace and a bracelet. Emma was wearing a ring and two earrings. My wife was wearing an earring and a bracelet. They both wanted the crown I was wearing. I was eager to let them have it, but they wouldn’t take it from me unless they won it fair and square.
My wife and Emma are nothing if not board-game-rules-following people.
When I won my second earring, Emma decided she had to have a picture of me. I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea. Emma said “Tough” and took my picture with her cell phone. My wife suggested that Emma set her cell phone up so that picture pops up whenever I call Emma. I told Emma that if she did that, I wasn’t going to call her anymore.
“Good,” Emma said.
I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but Emma doesn’t exactly jump when I suggest that she should.
I was just about to really share my feelings with Emma when my wife shared her feelings with me by telling me to “shut up and spin the ^%$# dial.”
So I did. I landed on another ring. Emma laughed and reached for her cell phone.
We played for a little while longer. Thankfully, I didn’t win the game. Emma did, which made her happy.
Later, after we put the game up and I was back in the kitchen watching baseball, Emma came in and thanked me for playing Pretty Princess with her.
I told her it was fun.
“Good. Then can we play again tomorrow night?” Emma asked.
I told her it wasn’t that fun.
“Tough. You’re playing,” Emma said and walked out of the kitchen.
I wonder if I should do a better job of sharing my feelings.
