I love board games and card games.
I like interacting with real people in a real room, eating real food, drinking real scotch and talking real shit.
I remember my parents' card parties. Momma would cook nearly all day and Poppa would set up the tables and make what seemed like a billion trips to the store because Momma always thought she had forgotten something. Then they would get ready for their guests. The style was "casual-sharp."
Then the guests would arrive. They all looked so pretty, so stylish.
The buffet would be laid and then the playing would begin. Friday evening until Sunday morning, the booze flowed, the feast was eaten, music played and people danced and laughed and sometime tempers flared over a lost trick but everybody calmed down quick and the laughter and music started again.
Pinochle and Bid Whist were the orders of the day. Not everyone stayed the three days, but there was always someone else to take the place of the people who left.
And the KIDS. We always got to have a sleep over, but we didn't sleep. We did the things kid do. We tried to steal Momma's homemade rum balls or play pranks on the adults as they tried to steal a nap. And of course there was sitting quiet in the dark at the top of the stairs in the tiny hours, listening to gossip and the wisdom adults speak in the quiet times.
And the whole time, the games kept going as did the happiness.
People came and went and there was always people waiting to play, to laugh, to live.