My siblings and I are very close as evident by me writing a lot of things about my family. We grew up playing board games to channel the sibling rivalry energy to something that does not involve physical pain.

From Unsplash - Jaciel Melnik

We are often found during Saturday nights in my eldest sister's room with chips. cola, hot chocolate and hunched over some the boardgames and cards that we played as kids. It usually the three of us with our youngest brother just watching and occasionally putting a token in his mouth but as he grew older we were the foursome that played all night.

So let me share with you some of the games we played.

Snakes and Ladders

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This classic game was one of my earliest memories of playing with my sisters as the premise of the game is very simple as you roll the dice and move your token to the appropriate space. Some spaces would have ladders that you can take that would make you advance several levels or get bitten by a snake and go down several blocks.

It was interesting to note that this version had pictures of kids doing good things like studying, being honest and helpful and they get rewarded and when they do bad things like eating too much or chasing pigs they get punished.

In a way, my family was already instilling with me the values to be a good person who gets ahead by doing the right thing.

Sorry!

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We had the most laugh at this one at the expense of our 2nd sister. This involves more of a strategy as your objective is to get all of your tokens home after navigating through the entire board.

You pull a card and follow the directions stated either moving a certain number of steps forward or backward. Much coveted is the Sorry! card which makes it possible for you to bump a token of your opponent that is near home and send it back to the Starting point. It is like the Blue Shell weapon in Mario Cart.

I remember having a devilish smile as I utter the words Sorry! to my sister and see her token go back home.

In a way it mirrors life as we move forward or backward depending on the cards/circumstances we are dealt with. Then sometimes life flips a Sorry! card on us and we have to dust ourselves off and start again.

Monopoly

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My first foray on owning properties and an introduction to the bankster mindset. Monopoly's goal was to be the last man/woman standing and owning most if not all properties or breaking the bank. You start off by buying strategically properties and utilities and continue to buy and upgrade your properties to become hotels.

You would count off with glee as a sibling will land on your most expensive property and if they did not have enough money then they can sell you properties which you would greedily snatch up.

I would often be assigned as the banker so that I can learn my digits and to mentally add and subtract numbers as I changed bills, sold properties and computed mortgage.

Although the game was supposed to teach about economics and how bad it is to have monopolies it pushed people to want to own everything and be rich because having a fat wallet matter.

This is a sad reality in the world as well as Steemit as you can see people with enough money can either do good or do bad things.

Scrabble

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We absolutely loved this game because we were avid readers and so our vocabulary was more than your average kids and we had such a competitive nature.

Each letter had a corresponding value and the board had "power-ups" like a double or triple letter or word score. If you are able to chain it properly you could get a very high score on your turn. Many a game was reversed by a timely comeback with a high scoring word.

Although I was at a disadvantage first because of my dyslexia but this was one game that helped me overcome my weakness.

Just like in life, Scrabble is all about the knowledge that you possess plus hard work in building your score and sometimes a little luck as the tiles you get form that game-winning word.

Boggle

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Where in Scrabble I was in a bit of a handicap, in Boogle I learned to use my dyslexia to be able to see patterns in the letters to be able to create words in the time limit set.

It is a really fun game as you have to list as many words as you can in the time limit. The pressure of time and seeing your siblings write more words than you ignited a drive to think more creatively. I remember a session where we would often dispute a word because it is so archaic, most probably gotten from Shakespeare or the like, or so new that it isn't an official word yet but more of a popular term that hasn't entered mainstream vocabulary.

Boggle was me seeing that my disability was a differentability that should not make me feel stupid or less than another person.

Clue

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My eldest sister was a huge Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys fan and so it was not surprise when she wanted to play the part of a budding detective.

A game of who done it, where, and how. It tested our analytical and reasoning skills as we attempted to uncover the mystery of the murder. You learned to look for the "tells" or signs that your sibling is bluffing (lying!)

It was a great skill that I acquired a technique of analyzing non-verbal cues and body language when interviewing people.

It helped develop my reasoning and deduction skills that I use in everyday life to analyze things.

Board games are a cherished memory of my childhood. It helped me learn to do Math, strategize and formulate action plans, increase my vocabulary, see myself in a different light. It was also the basis that formed my moral compass that I live by today.

The social interaction skills I had learned with my sibling would, later on, be passed on when I started going out and having friends. We would play video games and even Magic The Gathering but occasionally we would dust off one of these board games and have so much fun.

So what were the board games you played when you were a kid?

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