Would you rather play Monopoly or Chutes and Ladders?
If you are looking to minimize your time having to play games with children—and aren’t we all?—Chutes and Ladders is the obvious choice. According to Hasbro, Monopoly can take anywhere from 30 to 180 minutes, while Chutes and Ladders takes only 30 minutes. But if you play Monopoly, you might get to be the car, and Chutes and Ladders has no cars: just really long ladders and even longer chutes. Chutes and Ladders never exceeds 30 minutes because when your child lands on the long chute—and the child always lands on the long chute—they will throw a tantrum and overturn the board, ending the game. This might sound good—no more Chutes and Ladders!—but they will cry for the next 150 minutes, making you wish you had opted for Monopoly, even if you had to be the hat.
Would you rather watch kindergartners play checkers or…not?
Go for it! Watching 5-year-olds play checkers is hilarious, especially in September. Each child arrives at school never having lost a game of checkers. They’ve only ever played against loving adults, and these adults always let them win, creating a class full of Undefeated World Champions.
Now, two kindergartners face off on opposite sides of a checkerboard.
One of them will win but the other will lose.
The suspense! The drama!
It’s as thick as peanut butter, but less likely to cause an allergic reaction.
Would you rather play Mancala or set up your grandmother’s pills for the week?
This is a trick question, as the two activities are pretty much identical. In Mancala, you hold a bunch of flattened glass marbles in your hand and carefully drop one into each compartment of the board.
In setting-up-your-grandmother’s pills, you hold a bunch of Simvastatin in your hand and carefully drop one into each compartment of the weekly pill organizer.
Would you rather supervise children playing a competitive game or a cooperative game?
This is also a trick question as there is no such thing as a cooperative game with children. Snail’s Pace Race claims to be. It has six wooden snails, each a different color. You roll a die with six colored sides. If it lands on “red,” the red snail moves forward. If it lands on “yellow,” the yellow snail moves forward. The players are not competing, just the snail’s are! Yay! How cooperative! We can all root together for the different colored snails! We can be happy when the blue one wins or the pink one or even the green one! It doesn’t matter!
Um, no. The game makers lacked some basic understanding of children if they could not picture them yelling “I GET TO BE THE RED SNAIL!” and “MY BLUE SNAIL IS GOING TO BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF YOUR ORANGE SNAIL!”
And no one ever wants to be the green snail.
Would you rather play “Would You Rather” or would you rather not play “Would You Rather”?
Take a pass on this one. “Would You Rather” with children is disgusting. It involves vivid imagery of boogers and farts and being eaten alive by blood-sucking leeches and brain-slurping zombies. Get out while you can. Go help your grandmother with her pills.
One of your best!
But would you rather play War or watch your kid play Solitaire?
Very ha ha. I laughed out loud