Let me first explain the photo and that most becoming expression on the face of our lovely niece, Lorelai. In the lower left hand corner of the photo you can see the edge of a game board. . . for Sorry . . . and Kathy snapped this picture right after I won what was a hard-fought, up-and- down battle – evidently to the disbelief and displeasure of Lorelai. And by the way, this facial expression was in no way coached by Kathy. The moment my victory was evident to all, out came her tongue exactly as you see here. (If for some reason you ever take the time to list Lorelai’s talents, don’t forget “facial expressiveness.” It’s not necessarily a marketable skill, but it sure is endearing.)
But let me hasten to add that I don’t want anyone to get the idea that Lorelai was or is a sore loser. Far from it. True, she did not exactly lead the cheers for her Uncle Greg or do cartwheels over his victory. But I was really impressed with how she handled the up’s and the down’s that are par for the course with a game like Sorry. . . and it made me think that this game belongs in the closet of every little boy and girl and should be played on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to disavow them of the notion that smooth sailing and unbroken winning streaks are what she can expect – and what she deserves. The game of Sorry is the perfect antidote to such thinking because by its very nature the game tends to pluck you just as you’ve arrived at the pearly gates and unceremoniously drops you back to earth . . . or more literally drops you back in the starting gate, where you start all over again. If it were up to me, the game would be called “Aggravation” – I think that name was already taken – but in fact “Sorry” is perfect because that word gets said quite a lot through the course of the game, even if it’s sometimes uttered with less than sincere regret.
The toughest part of a game is when you draw a card which essentially directs you to take one of your four tokens from the starting gate and exchange it with an opponent’s already out on the board. . . sending them back to their own starting gate. It’s fun except that in most cases you have to choose who will be your victim- and although part of me was tempted to just never choose Lorelai (to give her a permanent bye, being a little kid) I knew that it really wasn’t in the spirit of the game or in her best interests to try and shield her from the reality of bad luck that is supposed to be part of the proceedings. So when it came time for my first hard choice, I came up with a brilliant solution: I decided to flip a coin. That first time, heads was my father-in-law and tails was Lorelai, and in that coin flip and every single one which followed, Lorelai won. Of course, Bad Luck found its way to her by other means and I loved how Lorelai shook off each and every setback- in some cases better than I did. The single funniest moment in the game was when Lorelai preyed on one of my tokens when it was maybe two spaces away from the “free zone” – the final stretch of seven spaces leading Home in which you can’t be touched by an opponent. She plucked me out of there just as I was smelling victory, and I let out a roar like the proverbial lion with a thorn in its paw. And when Lorelai laughed, I looked right at her and roared some more, climaxing with “I HOPE YOU HAVE NIGHTMARES EVERY NIGHT THIS WEEK!!!” At that , my wife said a quick “Dear!” with a very concerned look on her face, like I had truly blown a gasket, but Lorelai just laughed some more and then said “Do it Again!” So much for my capacity to scare a five-year-old girl. It was a great moment, especially because it showed that Lorelai has gotten old enough and wise enough to know that not everybody who’s roaring is really angry (whew!) and just because someone looks sad as they say “Sorry” doesn’t mean they really are. It’s one more sign that this wonderful little girl isn’t quite so little anymore .
Anyway, despite all our wishes to the contrary – as well as hers – Lorelai did not win this spirited game of Sorry; I did. And that hilarious look on her face was not so much a look of displeasure at having lost but rather that the game was suddenly over. (My victory caught even me a bit off guard.) But she shook it off like a trooper, and that’s a skill that will make a gigantic difference in her future happiness. One of my favorite writers, Judith Martin aka Miss Manners, said it really well when responding to a letter from someone who believed that it was important that every child at a birthday party – not just the honoree – have a present to open. Miss Manners had a lot of trouble with that idea, and finished her answer with these immortal words: “Any child who grows up believing they are to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral is destined for a very unhappy life.” Likewise, any child growing up with expectations of victory at every turn is going to be similarly unhappy – and will likely make everyone around them unhappy as well.
But thank goodness that Lorelai knows both how to win and lose and knows how to enjoy both. . . and that’s nothing to be sorry about!