Reading the top of the box

I think it was a comedian who said that life is like a board game and the lawyers are the ones who have read the top of the box. Proof positive that I am in the wrong field because in games as in life I cannot be bothered to read the top of the box. However, when one of us did finally consult the official rules to Uno on a point of contention, my instinct as to number of cards drawn at a turn was vindicated.

Ah but my reputation was already fouled. Beloved husband has already convinced them that my rules are yet another ruse to unfit them for the outside world. In checkers, I play that any one piece, if it has made one jump, can on that same turn continue jumping not just in the forward direction, but also backward, until jumps are exhausted. Why is that not the rule? My husband can't even look at it. Also, in dots and boxes, my husband plays this bizarre way where you can only win one box at a time. I can't think what the point of that is.

If it were up to me, I think we should just have a house rule that we must always go by the rule designed for liveliest play. It's not serious, and yet it so is. My kids are deathly sober toe-the-line types and it is quite possibly an important moral point this not being too authoritarian about checkers.