I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Todays topic is: Pick your poison: Candy Land or Chutes-and-Ladders and why?

I have said it twice now. I do not like board games. I think they are a waste of several hours of one’s life and if you can’t find anything better to do, don’t do anything at all. That is a saying that my mom used to tell me.

But in the spirit of good sportsmanship, if I had to choose and it was a life or death decision, I guess I would have to pick CandyLand.

But did you know, The 1950s polio scare produced parental panic—swimming pools emptied, parks cleared out, civic events were deserted. People stayed away from crowds. And parents kept kids indoors. Kawash says frightened parents seeking to prevent their children’s exposure may have seized upon the game as an indoor alternative to the dangers lurking outside.

Wow.

There’s more:  The initial packaging images are reminiscent of the iconic Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, where children were abandoned in the forest. During the polio epidemic, with lengthy hospitalizations, children often found themselves similarly separated from parents.  However, the CandyLand forest is neither dark nor scary. The game helped to ameliorate the parent-child separation, transforming the experience of the polio ward “into a sugar-laced holiday.”

I know, I know. This post was supposed to be about play. Not scaring little kids and their over-protective parents of 2012, a full 62 years since this polio thing.

So lets get down to it and play an “adult version” of CandyLand, shall we?

How to Play the Drinking Game CandyLand

This game puts an adult twist on the childhood favorite CandyLand. This drinking game blends the thrills of a board game with the excitement of a drinking game. Learn how to play the drinking game CandyLand by following these steps.

Things You’ll Need

2 to 4 Players

Alcoholic beverages

CandyLand game

Instructions

1. The game is played the traditional way, but the colors on the card have an additional command. The player picks a card, moves his person and does the drinking rule for that card.

2. Card Drinking Rules: Red = Make or break a rule Blue = All guys drink Purple = All girls drink Yellow = Player takes a drink Green = Make a rhyme Orange = Categories Doubles = Take two drinks and do that card color Cheats = Waterfall The People = Down your drink The Black Dots = Pass out three drinks

3. The winner of the game makes everyone down their remaining drinks all at once.

Tips & Warnings

Please drink responsibly and don’t drink and drive

I don’t know about you but the drinking version sure has to be more fun than sitting around the house watching the Lifetime channel or the struggling Oprah network, OWN.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort.

I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is: What piece do you have to be in Monopoly and why?

You’re killing me smalls!

I just said yesterday that the game of Monopoly has got to be the worst game in the world to play and toady’s topic is what is the piece I just HAVE to be.

Are you kidding me?

If you are going to twist my arm, I would have to say the dog in the classic game. But this game just like just about everything else has sold out to “the man”.

There are more versions of Monopoly than there are flavors at Baskin Robbins.

Some of my favorites are:

Grateful Deadopoly

Klingon Monopoly

Cocktailopoly

And everybody’s favorites: 

Strippopoly

XXXopoly

Then there’s: 

Fishin-opoly

Foreclosure Opoly

White-tail-opoly

and then:

Fairy-opoly

DIY-opoly

Dance-opoly

But as in everything in life (well, mine anyway) can be attributed to the movie:

A Christmas Story, you have

A Christmas Story Monopoly game.

America’s favorite board game is getting all decked out for the holidays with A Christmas Story Collector’s Edition of Monopoly Game.  Relive the funniest and most memorable scenes from this classic holiday film as you buy, sell, and trade treasured mementos like the BB Gun, Hubcap Full of Nuts and Randy’s Snowsuit.  So take off your Pink Bunny Suit, try to repair your shattered Leg Lamp, and be sure to have your Secret Society Decoder Pin handy as you advande to GO!

Includes six collectible pewter tokens:  Fragile Crate, Ralphie’s Bunny Suit, Leg Lamp, Bar of Soap, Broken  Glasses, and Old Man’s Car.

 It’s a Major Award!

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort.

I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is: What is the worst game to get stuck playing?

I have said it once and I will say it again. Monopoly.

Yep that is right, the iconic board games has got to be the worst game in the world to get stuck playing.

I once turned down a date with the prettiest girl in school when we were making plans for our first date and she suggested:

“Come on over to my place and we can play Monopoly!”

Hoping she wasn’t suggesting ‘something else’ or somehow there wasn’t a double entendre there but I declined none-the-less.

Monpoly has got to be the most agonizing form of entertainment known to man. Does it ever end? No!

At least back in Lincoln’s day, he passed the time reading books.

Monoply has a good premise. You go around the board and collect your loot while buying up properties and charging your pals rent. Sounds like really life, doesn’t it? No.

Who cares how much wealth you accumulate when it is just funny money.

Hey wait a minute. Isn’t that what got us in the mess in this country? Didn’t it all start with P-BO’s Cash for Clunkers program?

Funny money or not, its 2012 for goodness sake. Who cares who owns a railroad and when can a couple hundred bucks get you out of jail?

I guess if you want you can take a Chance but I’m betting there is more in that Community Chest than a game of monolpy that will take years off of your life, literally. I mean, when has a game ever ended in under sixteen hours.

Who has that kind of time? I would rather spend it on Facebook.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort.

Starting late last year the burger chain came out with a line of new burgers that look an awful lot like the ones you might see at a Denver fast food joint, Smashburger. They also tweaked their fries with sea salt and claiming to be “natural cut”. What does that mean? Are shoestring fries unnatural? How about tots? Don’t tell that to Napoleon.

Back to the burgers. They are calling them Dave’s Hot ‘N Juicy Cheeseburgers. How can they claim that? Dave has been dead for years.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved Dave. I thought he was pure genius. His down home folksy style reminded me of my own grandpa. But therein lies the problem. People that eat fast food don’t want to think about their grandpa when they are sitting down to grub.

They are still trying to re-invent the wheel at the place that plays Bon Jovi’s Living on a Prayer on the overhead speakers and the quaint tables for two. This month they released even more choices with offerings such as chili cheese fries, Mac ‘n cheese and sweet potatoes with cinnamon butter.

All of this sounds great. Doesn’t it?

The problem is Wendy’s has never been cool. When you were a teenager did you and your friends hang out at Wendy’s? I doubt it. It was the place that the middle age crowd went to eat to feel a little less square. Pun intended, for sure.

How could a place be cool that once supported a full salad bar? How could it be hip when in the 80s the burger chain made their pimply faced teen work force wear polyester baby blue and white striped shirts and those hats you might see in and old black and white movie about golf. You know the ones. The hat that sort of folds down in the front and snaps with a little button. Like a L.L. Cool J. lid but a whole lot less fly.

How could a place be cool that doesn’t have a playground for kids and their happy meals, or whatever they are called, featured toys from obscure movies nobody ever goes to see.

How could a fast food joint be cool if you are more likely to find grandma than your next main squeeze?

I’m sure the marketing geniuses behind the place that Dave built thinks they are doing a great job. Are they? I don’t know.

Let’s take the up and coming metropolis of South Central Alaska. At my count there are only three Wendy’s and at least 30 Mickey Ds and Kings. Maybe we have a different “taste” in fast food up here. Maybe we are just comfortable getting our 128% of our daily allowance of fat, sodium and sugar at places that we can take our kids.

My vote is for Chick-fil-A. That is something that we don’t have up here.

Do you go to Wendy’s? Why or why not?

Today’s topic is: What sport do you wish you could try?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I played A LOT of sports as a kid. I loved just about anything that required you to keep score. It could be anything from a game of wiffle ball in the backyard to an all-nighter game-fest of trivial pursuit or god forbid monopoly.

I really wanted to play baseball.

In fact in the second grade I signed up to play in the Onslow County Little League and was picked for a team. We were the orange team. All the teams in the league were named a color and our uniforms were simple. Just the color and a white number on the back. That’s it. How original right?

Anyhow, it was early June and we had only been practicing for a week or so and I was sitting in the little bleachers down the first base line. I was minding my own business with WAY too much Big League Chew in my mouth and suddenly one of these up and coming sluggers hit a foul ball. Everybody screamed HEAAAAAAAADDDDDDDSSS!!

I was in my own little world. Not paying attention to much of anything except a moth that was fluttering by. I quickly understood why nobody likes moths—They are the zombies of the butterfly world.

Anyhow, this errant foul ball hit me smack dab on top of the head and sent my flat bill orange cap flying. It was still flat-billed because I wasn’t quite cool enough to fix it right.

I was laid out right then and there and dang near choked to death on my wad of chew. I saw stars and blacked out a second or two.

The next thing I knew I was on the ground with my feet up, a cool washcloth on my head and a group of snot-nosed 8-year olds surrounding me asking me if I was okay.

I was sent home with a note pinned to my back so I couldn’t take it off written to my mom. It said, in short:

Robby can’t play ball anymore.

He got hit in the head.

Signed, The Coach…

That was it. No ambulances. No trips to the hospital. No suits filed by my old man because SOMEBODY wasn’t ‘watching’ me. It was cut and dry. I took a walloped to the noggin and sent home. I even walked. It was just across the street, but still.

I guess I could have played ball after I recovered but I didn’t. Why? Because by mid-June we moved away from our little house on Collis Avenue to North Carolina to live with my step-dad Mike.

I doubt I would have been any good at baseball anyway. It is too much standing around. I was a football player. I wanted to hit somebody!

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

Related articles

• NaBloPoMo: How did you feel as a child when you lost a game? (robertforto.wordpress.com)
• NaBloPoMo: Strong memory about recess (robertforto.wordpress.com)

Today’s topic: Did you have a favorite sports player as a child?

Growing up I was a big football fan. I watched from my play pen. I loved Howard and Dandy Don. My mom even let me stay up late. I usually made it til at least halftime before retiring to my room.

I didn’t really have a favorite sports player. I loved watching them all. I especially liked watching the Steelers in the 1970s with Terry Bradshaw, Lynn Swann, Mean Joe Green and Franco Harris. The 49ers in the 80s with Joe Montana, Roger Craig and Jerry Rice. The Cowboys with Danny White then Troy Aikman, Randy White, Emmitt Smith, Ed Too Tall Jones in the 90s… Wait a sec. The 1990s? I was a full-grown adult by then.

But the team I really loved to watch was the Washington Redskins of the 1980s. We lived in the Washington-area suburbs back then and we headed to the old R.F.K. to catch a game a couple times a year. I loved The Hogs, John Riggins, Mark Mosely, Art Monk, Darrell Green and Joe Theismann. I will never forget that Monday Night game in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor took out Joe Theismann’s leg and his career. You could hear his leg snap on T.V.!

I still love football but it is a different game today. Too much talk about bounties, spy-gate, concussions, salary caps, player arrests and suicides.

It will be interesting to see where the game is in 20 years and I can not help but wonder if it will even be the game we recognize today.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is: What do you do to celebrate a win?

For the past seven years or so we have played Forto’s Fantasy Football.

In early August we gear up for the draft and peruse over a multitude of stats books and prowl the Internet looking for players to fill our rosters.

Talk about competition! On any given year anyone in my family has a chance to win. For the last several years, my daughter, Nicole has held strong with her dad giving me a run for my money down the stretch.

After each season we award the winning team with the coveted Forto’s Fantasy Football trophy with an engraved plaque with the winner’s name.

The winner gets to keep the trophy for the year until it is claimed by the winner the following season.

The winner is also treated to a dinner, paid for by the losing teams, at a place of his, or her, choosing.

Even though I have won for the last three years in a row I still look forward to playing each year. Last year my son Tyler and I were in Alaska and my wife Michele, and Nicole were in Colorado. We conducted our draft over Skype. It was a blast!

I believe this little tradition is one of the things that keeps our family strong and teaching my kids what competition is all about. Sure it is fantasy football, but the camaraderie and passion each of us has is a good way to stick together.

What do you do to celebrate a win?

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

Related articles

• NaBloPoMo: How did you feel as a child when you lost a game? (robertforto.wordpress.com)

Today’s topic is: How did you feel as a child when you lost a game?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in the Forto/Gibson household there were no points for second place. It was sudden death overtime every day and night, seven days a week, 365. No questions asked. Period.

This competitive edge has helped and haunted me for the last 41 years.

One story to share was dinnertime at the family abode.

My stepdad, Mike, being a U.S. Marine was disciplined. Very disciplined. You have to be to be a part of the nations elite military service. We had weekly inspections every Saturday for our bedrooms. I’m not talking bounce-a-quarter off of the bed sheets, but our rooms had to be in order and things picked up off the floor OR we weren’t allowed to go outside to play. Simple as that.

Back to the story… Mike used to watch the Evening News with Peter Jennings every night on ABC before dinner. My mom, would be slaving away in the kitchen making up the nightly casserole (or whatever) and us boys were itching to eat. We were growing ya know!

Inevitably, every night my brother, Ryan and I, would be sitting at the table a few minutes before 6:30. You could set your watch by it. Thank god daylight savings time didn’t occur at 6:30 in the evening because we were starving!

At 6:30 you would here Peter say, “For everyone at ABC News, I am Peter Jennings. Good Night.”

That was it. It was like Pavlov’s bell. We were salivating! All that food laid out so neatly on the round table in the corner. Every night it was a main course, a side or two, bread and a glass of coke. No milk. Gross.

As Mike would sit down to eat in his chair with the arms. The only chair with arms. He would say just three words. “Dig in, boys!”

That was our cue. It was time to enjoy the fixin’s laid out before us. My mom was still over in the kitchen doing one thing or another as the three of us ate like savages. We consumed our daily food pyramid of viddles quicker that mom could serve it up. I don’t recall her siting down for a hot meal for 15 years.

It became a competition. Whoever came in second would have to do the dishes. I was not having that. Ever.

On nights that I did lose. Usually nights with brussels spouts I was resigned to K.P. duty. That usually meant just loading up the dishwasher. Never pre-washing. Why? It was a dishwasher.

By 6:35-6:40 it would be all over. The ceremony of the family dinner was complete. Even though it was quick and relatively painless, we all made it a point to eat together. That is something that most families don’t do today.

By 7:00 we were back outside playing catch in the back yard or our favorite, wiffle ball with a huge red bat that Mike called “Big Bertha”.

During those evenings outside Mike would talk to us about the importance of doing your best and setting yourself up for success.

I will never forget those nights with my family. I just know I did my best not to lose at dinner because I hated doing the dishes.

And still do today. 

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is what sports did you play as a child?

Truth be told I could play a mean game of jacks when I was a kid. I had my fair share of victories on the hopscotch court and ruled at kickball in my early years dominating the playgrounds of Highlawn Elem in Huntington, West Virginia.

I won a many hand of blackjack  and 5-card stud and was a mean thrower on the craps table. I could slam a game of bones and my UNO skills were just slightly inferior to my nun-chuck skills.

Growing up in the rust belt we were under the shadows of the Pittsburg Steelers, the Cincinnati Bengals and the lowly Cleveland Browns. Each of these pro teams were less than a days drive from my house.

Being this close obviously meant that little boys played football. We lived, breathed and ate football. Even at six, when I first put on a helmet, I was ready to rock and roll on the grid iron.

It was a different time back then. Little boys didn’t run to their mommy for every owie and daddy didn’t sue the league if his son didn’t get to play.

One of my fondest memories when I was a child was Thanksgiving Day in the second grade. I was playing on the Onslow County pee-wee football league and we got to play on Thanksgiving Day at Marshall Univeristy in THIER stadium on ASTROTURF.

THANKSGIVING DAY!

Thanksgiving day football is just about as much American as you can get. It is the day that the Lions play. It is the day that American’s team, (for goodness sake!) the Dallas Cowboys play!

Our little team got to play on a real field in front of fans in the stands. They announced our names on the loudspeaker and the scoreboard showed who was winning AND losing. Yes, like I said it was a different time back then. Games didn’t end in ties just for the self-esteem of the players. If we lost, we lost and we heard about it from the coach at the end of the game. THAT builds character. None of this crap, ” Johnny, go out there and have fun. Who cares if you win or lose…”

While the game on turkey day was awesome it was who was in the stands that made it great.

My dad was in the stands. He and my mom had called it quits a couple years before and my dad was now living in the coal mining town of Logan, WV with some lady named LaDonna.

Hmmm. My mom’s name was Donna. Go figure…

I digress. Let’s get back to the game.

Also in the stands was my mom and soon-to-be step dad, Mike. He was watching me play for the first time.

Mike was a U.S. Marine. He was a college football star at West Virgina. Yep that WVU. Home of the Mountaineers.

He also played linebacker at West Virgina Tech and was drafted by THE Oakland Raiders.

He decided to serve his country instead.

What does all this have to do with me and what sports I played?

A lot.

Mike taught me the game of football. He made me into one hell of a linebacker. The position I played all the way through high school.

Those skills carried over to a force to be reconned with on the ice rink playing hockey and one of the best short-stick center-defense lacrosse players in the suburbs of Washington D.C.

I was so tough on the lacrosse field that I was nick-named the Terminator. I had a haircut like The Boz.

I carried those skills with me to play hockey, indoor and outdoor lacrosse in adult leagues and even today I try to instill that same work ethic in my kids that are involved in high school sports right now.

Because kids, in life as in sports, it does matter who wins. Don’t let anyone fool you different.

I guess it was a different time back then.

Was it?

What sports did you play as a child?

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

Related articles

• NaBloPoMo: Strong memory about recess (robertforto.wordpress.com)
• NaBloPoMo: Who wouldn’t you play with as a child? (robertforto.wordpress.com)