Remembering Dan on National Tabletop Day

Saturday was National Tabletop Day, an independent movement started as a way to celebrate the tradition of playing board games.  Once a “geeky” thing to do, playing tabletop games has been making a comeback. While video games are a lot of fun, there are certain components of tabletop gaming that can not be replicated no matter how many advances are made in graphics. Board games allow players an excuse to conversation while teaching math and other life skills.  Board games are among the first places where children learn to take turns, to count, to follow rules, to cooperate, and to build strategy.  Dan was both social and competitive by nature, and it is no surprise that he loved to play games.

Dan’s love for games started at a young age.  Trivial Pursuit, Pizza Party and Monopoly Junior were particular favorites.  Sadly, Pizza Party is out of print.  We played a lot of Don’t Break the Ice with our cousins at my grandparents’ Ocean City house.  As Dan’s interest in history grew, he started to play Risk.  Dan took games seriously, and did not like when other players were not giving their full attention.  To be fair, I do not think that anyone else in the family loved Risk so much that they would wear hats or yell. As we got older, we outgrew Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, and Dan became busier with his schoolwork and his busy sports schedule.  Yet at least once a year, we’d gather around the dining room table to play a game that one of us had received for Christmas. During one Christmas open house, we played a game of Phase 10, and as guests arrived or departed from the party, player #4 changed.  Yet Dan had a sassy comment for them all, and during most rounds, he beat them, too. 

FIshing Trip Poker

Dan enjoyed card games- especially poker, an interest that formed during his Penn State years and continued during the Red Baron Memorial Fishing trip and with the Five Points Hellfish.  Dan would sit on the corner of the picnic bench, with his cards on the table and his stash of pocket change next to his left hand.  (He was a lefty.) He had the best poker face.  While the other players would keep their change in their pockets or stacked neatly on the table, Dan chose to hold his in an old gym sock.  It was certainly safe there.  Ick! 

 

Settlers on the Porch

It was a card game that started my McLaughlin cousins’ tradition of playing games together at the shore.  We would settle down on the porch for a game of Uno as we waited for the tide to rise.  As these games usually had between 6 and 9 players, they could last for quite a while.  I can remember several nights where we played Uno Attack until the wee hours of the morning.  Another favorite was Settlers of Catan.  Dan would attempt to negotiate trade deals for resources in an attempt to build longer roads or bigger cities and became impatient with those who had better hands.  (This is where Pat earned the nickname “Wood Nymph.”)

Our last McLaughlin board game was a six-player game of Phase 10 Twist, which started around 11:30 PM.  In the heat, several of the players and spectators were also drinking “pixie drink” from a frozen bucket.   This may have contributed to the length of the game. Dan and I were tied for the lead, but by 2:00 in the morning, I finally threw in the towel.  Dan did a victory dance.  I told him that it wasn’t a victory, that I was just getting too old to stay up that late.  Ben, Shannon, and my cousins ran to bed as if they were afraid there would be a rematch. 

Dan passed along his love of playing games to his nephew, Diz.  Every  Christmas, Dan would give Diz a few “classic” board games that took me back in time and reminded me of when my brothers were small, and let me learn the joys of board gaming with my own child.  Dan’s last gift to Diz was Mouse Trap, which we played almost every day of winter break.  

I think of Dan every time I crack open up a game box.  There are several games in the basement that I never got to play with him, and that makes me sad.  I reached for my phone yesterday and wanted to send him a picture of Diz beating me at Go Fish, and cried a little when I realized that I couldn’t.  But I know that he would want us to still play games as a family.  

And tease Pat for being a Wood Nymph.