Pass go and collect $200

The summer I was 4 years old and my brother was 7, we often took daytime walks with our mother to a local discount store. It was about a half mile from our apartment — a sort of a 99-cent and hardware store wrapped in one.

While there, we walked through the toy aisles while our mom bought Contact paper by the yard or had a key copied, but one purchase that summer topped them all — Monopoly.
 
You can tell a lot about someone from the way they learn and play Monopoly. For some, it’s “Boardwalk and Park Place or bust,” while others bide their time to own utilities or the dark purple properties that are nearest to passing “Go.”  I learned to read and work with numbers thanks to that 1960s version of the game. And, it was the process of playing, not winning or losing, that I remember best.

I remember that my mom liked the thimble token, for example, and how my dad tried to hide his money under the board until he was ready to buy houses and hotels.

I also admire the longevity of this game and recognize its place as one of very few things that has so much association with our family’s history. There was one year I created a board in Spanish for a class project in junior high. Another summer my 10-year-old nephew came to New York for vacation and he always bought green properties when we played. (He also won an inordinate amount of games because he kept winning money for landing on “Free Parking.”) There was also the time my kids taught a videogame-loving teenager the subtleties and strategies since he had never seen the game before. And, there were practical discussions in my advertising class about the game’s association with a fast food restaurant’s sweepstakes; a case study of some of the most positive and negative marketing ever tied to the fast food brand.  

So many editions of the original have been made only to further to add to the staying power of this brand: themes, junior version, global cities and the most up-to-date reflection of 2012 economics — the no-paper-money-at-all version with debit cards.

Regardless of which board you prefer or the number of times you’ve played, there is something about this particular game that lends itself to a little joy and few distractions. Maybe a little luck and skill need apply, but it’s still a pretty cool place to get away for a few hours, just to roll the dice and discuss your life while collecting $200.

Lauren Lev is an East Meadow resident and a direct marketing/advertising executive working on Long Island. She teaches advertising and marketing communications courses at the Fashion Institute of Technology/SUNY and LIU Post. Her story on a Jewish education program impacting our local community will appear in “Thin Threads: Real Stories of Hadassah Life Changing Moments” in late spring 2012.