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by Nicole Crosby |
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I yearn for the old Life. The one with Art Linkletter's face on every $100,000 bill. The one that dangled shrunken head collections and skunk farms along the winding path to Millionaire Acres. An uncle needs bail money, gambling debts are due, probation interrupts a college career. That was the sordid Life we lived and re-lived, my brother and I, on the linoleum-tiled basement floor of our childhood home. Thirty years later, my ten-year-old son and I unfold a sanitized version of The Game of Life, politically corrected beyond recognition. He punches out crisp, new "Life Tiles" exhorting him to open a health food chain and find the solution to pollution. No more Revenge spaces. (Imagine Life without revenge.) Instead, we are instructed to return lost wallets and recycle our trash. The days of winning big at the races are over. Now we receive Lifetime Achievement awards and learn CPR. It's a kinder, gentler Life. Even the spinner runs smoother and quieter. Best friends don't sell best friends' $10,000 phony diamonds. They're too busy bettering themselves and saving mankind. Today's version of Life is so adamantly aspirational, you can cure the common cold, create a new teaching method and win the Nobel Prize all in a days work. Misfortune comes in the form of a mid-life crisis, which we promptly address with a career change. Tired of being a superstar? Switch to accountant, travel agent or salesperson. No longer are lawyer, journalist or physicist career options. (Presumably, winning the Nobel Prize is now within the reach of a travel agent.) As my son's tiny green car dotted with blue and pink passengers careens past "Say No To Drugs," I remember the joy of finding uranium deposits right after college graduation. The extra $100,000 came in handy on a $15,000 lawyer's salary. Of course, gentrification of the Poor Farm was inevitable. It's been converted to the gracious but affordable Countryside Acres -- an upscale retirement community with a slick logo. If Life was as pat and predictable as all that when I was nine, I would have turned "Petticoat Junction" back on. The curving path on this new gameboard is the only twisted that remains. A very unLife-like family on the current box cover grins ecstatically at me as they contemplatepicking up litter and accepting humanitarian awards. Gambling, extortion and elements with half-lives may not belong in children’s games. But what about the perils of blandness to young minds?
• Virus attacks hard drive. Must pay hacker $5,000 to save precious documents you forgot to back up. • Spill hot coffee on your lap while driving. Win $10 million lawsuit. • In-vitro fertilization of donated egg produces BABY BOY! Collect presents. • HMO won’t cover liposuction and buttocks implants. Pay $10,000 • Exposed cross-dressing on front page of tabloids. Lose lucrative
sneaker endorsement contract, but sell movie rights to life story
for $2 million. Hmm…maybe there is life after Life. |
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It’s
time Milton Bradley reincarnated Life with a version that leaves
the soul intact: