Pederson Ponderings: Day 2 (I'm Awful at Journaling and Equally Bad at Ticket to Ride)

Let me start this off by politely telling anybody who needs me to do something responsible, that I'm probably not the right person for whatever you're going to ask me to do. Case and point, the eleven day gap since my last journal. Between being a teacher, growing my small business, and having five kids, the things I mean to do, don't always materialize until several weeks (or months) after I meant to do them. Not that that's a valid excuse. I just want to explain, in case my student needs to put this as a footnote in their data. It'll either say, "hard working father", "lazy teacher", or "worst guinea pig ever".

Anybody who knows me well, knows that I absolutely love anything made by Guy Ritchie. Of course, Disney's live action Aladdin film is questionable, as Disney removed most of Ritchie's signature editing from the movie. However, despite that one, Ritchie is still a master of his craft - at least in my opinion. My two favorite Guy Ritchie films are the ones that made him famous. The first one is called "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels". This is a film made in 1998 about a group of friends (who are all con-artists), who get themselves in over their heads in a high-stakes poker match and have to find a way out by paying an incredibly large sum of a money back to a gangster, who would rather see them dead than get his money back. The other movie is called "Snatch". This one has far too many plot lines to write about, but much like "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" it has to do with gambling, gangsters, and no shortage of bad decisions. One of my favorite things about Guy Ritchie films is his fast paced dialogue and edits. I also love the characters he creates, as each one has a unique nickname to go with what they're best at. For example, in "Snatch", the characters have names like "Boris the Blade" or "Bullet Tooth Tony", and they're often introduced through fast-paced montage scenes with cool music behind them. Stay with me for a minute, I promise this is going somewhere.

Last night, I was reminded why I have a love hate relationship with board games. Let me introduce the players to you in a Guy Ritchie montage. Imagine if you will, a table full of people. The camera pans to each one, switching to a cool filter with large text, featuring their names. In the center of the table is a copy of the board game, Ticket to Ride: Nordic Edition. The first player we see is my oldest daughter, whose nickname would probably be "The Nordic Snake", as she was trying incredibly hard to trick people into telling her which routes they were taking, so she could block them from getting to their destinations. The camera would next pan to my wife, whose nickname would show up in Courier New font as "Legal Lucy". Her name isn't actually Lucy, but that sounds better attached to the "legal" part. She is called this because she is a stickler for the rules, and she's not afraid to throw those instructions down if you try to trade your old destination cards for new ones. Finally, we have my nine year old, whose nickname would probably appear in a unicorn font (if that exists), as "Cloudy McScatterbrain". She would be called this because either she's the best Ticket to Ride player I've ever met, or the worst, as there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to how she plays. She just does things and laughs. Last night, she blocked me from hitting EVERY SINGLE ONE of my destinations. I write that in all caps because she didn't do any of it on purpose. The other night, my wife recalled the time she tried to teach our oldest two how to play Candyland. She got so frustrated with them that she actually had to leave the table. Last night, I had my Candyland moment. I was so frustrated that Cloudy kept blocking my destinations, not on purpose but because she "just wanted to put trains there".

It reminds me of that scene from "I Love You Man", where Jason Siegel goes on a golf date with Paul Rudd, his fiancé, and the woman they're trying to hook him up with. She ends up shooting a golf ball into his shin, which makes him how in pain and scream, "This is my nightmare", all while trying to keep his composure. Sometimes, as parents you get frustrated by things, but you can't show it, so you just have to keep bracing yourself for those metaphorical golf balls to hit you in the shins. They might be black and blue at the end of the night, but at least you can still limp to the cabinet for some Extra Strength Tylenol.

End of Montage . . . credits roll.