The Game of LIFE

Last night Sean and I decided to preview what our future together holds by busting out our previously unopened game of LIFE.

The Game of LIFE - Classic Version

Right from the get-go, Sean and I had to make some serious decisions. It didn't seem right to play against each other since in reality we are on the same team in the game of life, yet there were only the two of us playing (NOTE: I promise we have friends; they just weren't with us last night). After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that only one of us should play as us (aka. Sarah and Sean) and the other person should play as an anonymous couple (they could be named Katie and John or Rachel and Mike or Courtney and Albert or Nathan and Kim...any random pairing of a male and female name). Also, by having one of us (ie. Sean) play as another couple, it provided an excellent opportunity to compare our successes (and failures) in life with other couples around us.

We had additional difficulties when assessing exactly where we currently fall in the game of LIFE. According to LIFE, being in college puts you at the start of the game, yet being married moves you about 11 more squares down the path. I guess if you average the two, we are halfway across the first bridge. After choosing our cars (mine was blue, Sean's was green) and placing the appropriately colored vaguely people shaped pegs into the cars, we began.

To catch us up to where we both currently are in life, Sean and I both chose the college route (we felt the few extra squares were worth it). Luckily, we each got $3,000 dollars in scholarships and only had to pay $5,000 in tuition, leaving us with $2,000 each that we had to pay back in loans. I wish real life was like that. Upon graduation, we promptly got married. Sean and I realized we did our honeymoon wrong because instead of going to Europe, we should have bought $60,000 in horses! Oops. There also seems to be a bit of confusion in the game of LIFE because after marriage there isn't a path that leads back to college. Clearly the game is wrong and not our lives.

Proposed additional square for the Game of Life to make it more realistic.

At this point the game of LIFE turned into a predictor of our future.

Exactly 11 squares after marriage, Sean and I will be buying a house. We can then expect our first child to be a girl, and apparently this will occur 6 squares after our house purchase. 13 squares later, we'll have another girl and that will be it on the children front. We're not sure what the conversion is between squares and years, but we're hoping it's not one to one. Otherwise I'll be...old...when we finally buy a house and have children. On the other hand, I don't want the conversion to be too skewed the other direction because that would just freak me out.

Now, when I played LIFE with my sisters, we never invested in auto insurance. It seemed like a waste of a perfectly good $1,000. In fact Katie, Madison, and I pretty much ignored all the insurance and stock options offered. In real life, after the most recent car-related incident where two of my car windows were broken, I'm rather glad that I have chosen to invest in car insurance. Therefore, for the first time ever in the game of LIFE, I paid that $1,000 to buy auto insurance for Sean and I, just to be safe. I'm not sure that was a good idea though. Although I'm a very careful driver, I can expect to become much more careless in the future. After half way along the path, I lose my auto insurance for reckless driving, wasting a perfectly good $1,000.

Along the way Sean and I will inherit a skunk farm from my uncle and have to pay $20,000 to get rid of it. Thinking about my uncles, two come to mind. My Uncle Jeff is a farmer. Although he doesn't farm plants, how much difference can there really be between corn and soy beans and skunks? The other uncle, Uncle Danny, has no connection to farming, but he is just weird enough to buy a skunk farm. This is the uncle who gave my cousin a book about scary clowns this Christmas.

Aforementioned Uncle's Skunk Farm

Things were going well for the other couple in the other car when, out of nowhere, there loomed an unexpected threat.

Lurking

First Strike

Ensuring there are no survivors

After recovering from what can only be known as the Great Cat Incident, we and the other couple continued our way (a little more cautiously and a little more warily) down the path of life.

After climbing Mount Everest, helping homeless children, and winning a Nobel Prize, Sean and I will eventually make it to the Day of Reckoning. There someone (God?) will pay us $48,000 per child, we will assess our riches, and decide to become millionaires. We then will choose a grand retirement home/mansion (I actually have two picked out already: one on on top of Lake Travis in Texas and the other in St. Louis, Missouri) where we will retire in style.

The other couple did well too but not quite as well.  In the end, it isn't how much money you have that is important as long as you have more than everybody else.