I had the experience of playing the old board game called Trouble with a 7-year-old last night. The basic game has you move your 4 pieces around the board according to what number appears on the single die that pops in a plastic bubble in the center of the board. You can only enter the game if you roll a 6. You eventually end the game when the first person gets all 4 pieces to the HOME area.
Midway through the game, my opponent ran to get some Post-It notes. He started writing feverishly. On one Post-It he wrote, “FLY.” On another, he wrote “1,2,3,4,5,6.” Then he explained, “These are the new rules. If you land on FLY, you get to fly anywhere and land wherever you want. If you land on ‘1,2,3,4,5,6’, you can move any number – 1,2,3,4,5 or 6 – whichever one you like the best. Oh, and to get started, you can roll either a 5 or a 6 since it takes too long to get a 6 and we want to play other games tonight. OK?”
OK? Hmmm… yeah, that sounded OK to me, except I asked for a little more information about the flying part. He then put a game piece on top of the Post-It note that said FLY as if it were a magic carpet and showed how you would hop on and fly to wherever you wanted to go. You could even land on your HOME stretch if you wanted.
“OK,” I said. And we finished the game playing by the new rules. We also decided that we should keep making up some new rules for old games, since it makes them even more fun!
How many times do we keep playing by the old rules without ever considering if they still make any sense? In fact, maybe not even considering if they EVER made any sense. And when was the last time you asked someone you were playing with if it was OK if you changed the rules in your life? Maybe some new rules would be more fun.
And yes, it is allowed.
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