Better Living Through Trickery

While eating brunch at IHOP last Sunday, my sister and I entered negotiations for what game we would play that afternoon.

TINA: What do you want to play?
JASON: Why don't you pick a game?
TINA: No, you pick it.
JASON: Fine. Scrabble.
TINA: If I didn't want to play Scrabble yesterday, why would I want to play it today?
JASON: See? This is why I want you to pick the game. You don't want to play any of the games I do.
TINA: Okay. Monopoly.
JASON: No. It's stupid.
TINA: Fun City.
JASON: You mean Fight City? Do you remember what happened the last time we played it?
TINA: Trivia Pursuit.
JASON: Nnn--wait. I like Trivia Pursuit. Okay.

When we brought the game out, Tina and my Mom showed why they would make master negotiators. Their strategy, which continues to work in spite of the fact I am aware they are using it, is to toss out a series of ludicrous demands, knowing full well I will be overwhelmed and unable to protest each one.

TINA: Here are the rules. Mom and I get to play against you.
JASON: What?
MOM: And we can look up all of the answers on Google.
JASON: No, you're not looking the answers up on Google.
TINA: Fine. We'll only look up the really important ones.
JASON: No! Google is out of the question.

So half an hour later, I'm down 3 pie pieces to 1 and proud of myself that the computer isn't connected to the Internet.

If I were in a normal family and my sister and Mom asked to play together, I would be flattered. It would be an implied compliment to my intelligence, or at least my ability to retain trivia. Not with these two. My Mom and sister must snort lines of Gingko Biloba before I come over because my arrival somehow triggers the recollection of long-ago faded memories, all of which feature me doing something stupid.

My family doesn't even provide segues anymore or attempt to relate the stories to the current conversation. At lunch, Tina was telling us about her research project with turtles when in mid-sentence she burst out laughing.

MOM: What is it?
TINA: Do…you…remember [she pauses to grasp her aching sides and wipe the tears from her eyes] Japanese steakhouse. Jason.
MOM: HA HA HA HA! Yes! When he--

At this point, they both doubled over with laughter, unable to speak. I stirred my corn, having no idea what they are talking about but certain that, one, it was a tale transforming a small mistake I made into an epic story highlighting the buffoonery inherent in the human condition, and two, I would soon have an chance to have my own Corn Flakes moment and relieve the embarrassment again like it was the first time.

Thus, the Trivia Pursuit tag-team is no reflection of they having a high opinion of me. It is a reflection of the family life force that originated decades ago through a macabre fusion of genetics and psychology. We live through chicanery.

As a kid, Michele would stash Monopoly money in the bathroom before we played and then "need a bathroom break" every time she wanted to buy a hotel or another railroad. Tina, who disliked milk, would wait until I was distracted and swap her full glass with my half-empty one at the dinner table. Mom acted maturely until we were all sent off to college, where at that point she would wait until strangers walked by her car and then turn the car alarm on. I, the connoisseur, preferred more subtle methods of trickery, like telling my sister she got a Trivia Pursuit question wrong when in fact she got it right.

Asking aloud to search for answers on Google was a half-hearted attempt at best. If they were in the mood, Tina would have hid a laptop in the pantry and one of them would have gotten up to fetch a bowl of chips or can of soda every time they encountered a difficult question. They would have filled their game piece with pie slices while I would still be trying to figure out why my Mom wanted a can of kidney beans so badly.

The game might have ended differently if they played alone, but I doubt it. I knew it was a long night when this was the first question.

ME: What is removed with a hysterectomy?
MOM: I had one of those!
TINA: Go Mom!
MOM: A uterus.
ME: That's right.
MOM: Oh, no.
TINA: What?
MOM: It would have been funny if I had said penis.