I was the Dog

I was the dog. Dad was the top hat. You could actually fit the hat
over the dog's head, like a wry social comment on the bourgeoisie. The
dog fitted into the boot as well, but the symbolism of that was less
obvious and it wouldn't stay upright in any case.

It was just me and my Dad playing, stretched out on the carpet in the
living room. Penny, my little sister, usually joined in, but she always
wanted to be the iron, which on that particular day was lost. (it was
later discovered buried in the shag pile rug) Displaying a flicker of
the audacity for which she would eventually become notorious,
(something Mum liked to call 'chutzpah') she demanded that I compensate
her to the tune of fifty pence. For reasons I can't remember I
complied, and she left to spend it on sweets.

The game had reached a crucial point where the distribution of wealth
and properties was about equal, and the first few tentative house
purchases were taking place. Small loses and duff rolls at this stage
were liable to avalanche into catastrophic shifts of power. There was
everything to play for.

I held the two large, angular dice in my hand. One was pale pink, the
other powder blue. As a result of a deal I now questioned the wisdom
of, I was being forced to run the gauntlet of Mayfair and Park Lane
down the fourth and final side of the board. I rubbed my palms
together; the dice made a satisfying clicking sound. I cupped my hands,
pretend-spat into them, then loosed the dice onto the board with a
moderately deft flick of the wrist.

They bounced and came to a standstill. A two and a six. I had landed on
Mayfair. Although Dad had only built one house on it, that was two
hundred pounds I could ill-afford. I had mortgaged everything. Paying
would mean flogging several of my precious houses. I was an intelligent
eleven-year-old, but not very mature, and this insult was almost more
than I could bear. I let out a loud hiss of annoyance and shook my
head.

"That is just so&;#8230;" I began. "Why don't you ever land on my
houses?" I had the yellow and the purple set, plus a smattering of
buildings. Dad had one house, on Mayfair, a half of his only full
set.

"Beats me," he said. I had started surveying my finances with
disgust.

"This is total crap. I work really hard to build myself up and I get
really crappy dice rolls." I picked up some one-pound notes and
fractiously shuffled them about in my hands.

"Why don't you reroll?" Dad asked me. The question irritated me at
first.

"I can't reroll," I told him, still feigning counting my money.

"Why not?"

"A roll's a roll - it's not fair if you let me win, anyway&;#8230;
It just ruins it for me when I keep getting crappy numbers." I glared
at the dice. I hoped that my constant use of 'crap' and its variants
would wind my Dad up. He tolerated swearing borne of stubbed toes or
dropped plates, but 'lazy swearing' as he'd never called it definitely
rankled with him.

"So roll again, then. Roll better numbers."

"No! I'm not cheating! That'd just mess it all up."

"What's the difference between you rerolling the dice, and you having
got the numbers you wanted in the first place?" This question actually
made me stop and think, which Dad presumably saw as an opening. "What
would have happened if you'd rolled a six, or a nine?" I looked at the
board, counted spaces.

"If I'd rolled a nine, I would have been on Go," I said bitterly. Dad
nodded. "I six would've landed me on Park Lane, but at least I could
pay for that."

"How about a two?"

"I would have been on Community Chest&;#8230; and I'd 've had to
throw again."

"Which would you choose," Dad asked, "if you could just pick one of
those options?" I thought about this for a moment. I was no longer
annoyed, although I didn't realise it.

"Nine," I said confidently. "I would've been home free, and I'd 've got
enough to build two more houses."

"Let's do that, then," Dad said, and reached for my piece.

"No!" I almost shouted, grabbing his hand. "What are you doing?"

"Moving you onto Go. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"No, no I don't. I don't want to cheat."

"It's not cheating."

"Yes it is."

"Why?"

"Because it's not in the rules!" I was annoyed again.

"Who makes the rules?" Dad asked. I scrabbled about in the box lid for
the pamphlet, unfolded it and thrust it in front of his face.

"John Waddington!" I said, tapping my finger against the logo.

"Can't we change them?" said Dad, looking puzzled.

"No! You can't change the rules!"

"Why not?" I shook my head with despair.

"Cos that's not the game!"

"We'll make it the game," said Dad. "You can choose wherever you go on
your turn." I was ready to punch Dad in the face.

"Stop ruining it!" I exploded, my voice lapsing into a grating shriek
during the second syllable of 'ruining'. "You're spoiling the game! I
don't want to choose where to go, there's no point if you can just
decide! I could just win straightaway!"

"Isn't that what you want?"

"No!" I yelled, and then, realising what I'd just said, found myself
caught in a double-bind. I hedged. "I, uh, I&;#8230; I want to win,
but I don't want to win if it's stupid."

"Why don't you try something else then?"

"What?"

"Something other than winning? Why don't you try losing?"

"That'd be even stupider! What's the point in playing if you're just
going to play really crap?" Dad didn't flinch at my saying 'crap', so I
resolved to increase my use of it until he did.

"I don't know," said Dad. "It might be fun. Have you tried it?"

"No," I said.

"Or what about building houses across all your properties and
maintaining them as long as possible&;#8230; or you could see how
long you can keep me in the game, even though I keep landing on all
your hotels."

"What if we all went round the board backwards?" I said
derisively.

"That's a good one! You're getting the hang of it!"

"I wasn't-"

"From now on, if anyone rolls a double-one or a double-six, all moves
are reversed for the next turn, okay?"

"Dad," I said. "This is so crap. Please can we get on with the game?"
He slid his hand onto the board and scooped up the dice.

"You've got to shake the rules up, sometimes son," he told me, rattling
the dice in the cave of his closed fist. "Do what you like, do
something different. Life's going to roll you a lot of
eights&;#8230; Fate has a hundred million ways of spanking the
hubris out of silly little rule-loving people like me and you." I
didn't know what hubris was, but the spanking part sounded nasty. "I
know you think the sky's going to fall in if we monkey around with the
rules of a board game, but trust me, it won't. You've got to start
cheating, start cheating joyously, free of guilt. When you play, really
play."

"You know," he said, "if you hadn't rolled an eight, this conversation
would never have happened. So much in life is down to dumb luck. You've
got to start painting the lines of your playing field a little wider.
Everything's a game, when you get down to it. It's just a question of
whether you really throw yourself into it and enjoy it, or whether you
sit there cursing your crappy [he emphasised the word with
mock-petulance] luck." With that, he tossed the dice. They landed him
on Chance, and he ended up (rather implausibly, I felt) winning second
prize in a beauty contest.

It was thirty seconds or so later that I realised he had forgotten to
charge me for landing on Mayfair. I little frisson of triumph ran up my
spine.

If I had been a little less caught up in fantasising about my impending
victory, I would have realised then (and not later, when I was packing
the game up after Dad won convincingly) that during our conversation
Dad's financial situation had taken a sudden, unexplained turn for the
better, and I seemed to be short two houses. He had used the
conversation as cover while he filched stuff. Now that's chutzpah.