Kmartopoly
We patiently wait our turn, curving around the miniature metallic fencing which collectively traps us in, screaming for mercy, simply wanting out; then the high mistress of torture demands of the woman quivering in front of me:
‘Do you have a Fly Buys card?’
The lady runs away screaming, having been toppled over the brink of sanity. One too many Coles-Myer shopping experiences for her, it seems.
I grit my teeth and guardedly hold my new, shiny Monopoly set under my arm. I’ve been sent out on a mission to obtain this game to settle a long-standing argument between Adam and myself (which, I suspect, will end not in a triumphant battle of real estate trading, but rather a contest which involves seeing how much damage those cute little red hotels can cause when thrown at someone’s face with force).
‘It’s a one-day only store-wide sale!’ wails an undernourished youth through a loudspeaker at the front of the store, as us customers slowly shuffle through the Kmart checkouts. The permanent installation at the entrance to all Kmart stores - Aggravated Grandma Who Checks Bags - watches over us all suspiciously, in case anyone tries to make a heroic run for it with their Elmo picture frames and double-marked-down Rio underwear.
‘This is a double dilly sale,’ the youth desperately screams, then cocks his head in amazement of the sentence he just uttered. Apparently enticing customers to enter the store via continuous advertorial rambling at high volume is a taxing quest after a couple of hours.
The gelatinous nuclear family in front of me wobble forwards through the checkout aisle, as the daughter eyes off a plush toy entitled the ‘Hello Panda’ dangling from a plastic noose above the checkout.
‘Hello,’ the daughter mouths silently in return to the toy, then turns to the mother and begins wailing something about child abuse, but that she’s prepared to withdraw all charges if one Hello Panda is placed under her custody.
‘SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU LITTLE SHIT,’ roars the mother in a well-practiced tone, as the father of the family simmers and suffers silently in the background. The daughter promptly commences wailing. The small son of the family - at a guess, I’d say eight to ten years old - stands patiently waiting for it all to end, having apparently witnessed many events of this ilk before. With a world-weary sigh, he rests his head against the checkout desk and waits for his latest embarrassing venture with his family to end.
All of which takes me by surprise, because at first this collection of four looked identical to the laughing happy families on the board game boxes I’d been looking at five minutes ago. You know, the family all crowding around a game of Ker-Plunk, laughing at the sheer hysterical comedy of a marble falling down a tube. Or the family who, unable to contain themselves after deducing that their Guess Who mystery character doesn’t have a beard, have collapsed on the floor in laughter with their hands in the air. Or the rollicking, fun-time family who are sardonically giggling at poor ol’ dad as he puts his back out playing Twister and is carted off to hospital in screams of agony.
Glancing at the Monopoly board I’m holding, I realise it doesn’t actually feature any pictures of a laughing family. Upon further thought, however, this makes quite a bit of sense: if Milton Bradley were going to be accurate, they’d be forced to illustrate the family member with the least amount of property storming out of the game halfway through because they are ’sick of playing it’.
Mentally silencing out the husband and wife in front of me (who are now angrily hissing at each other - this method of arguing, if you’re married, is known as subterfuge debate), I study my Monopoly set. I’ve bought the Australian edition, which features localised streets, train stations and the like.
There are a number of Monopoly variant ideas I’ve been turning over in my head for a while now. For instance, Dot Com Monopoly¹ in which you buy and sell websites. In this edition, there’s not only a player acting as a banker but also a player acting as a venture capitalist, to enable the game to be played completely on credit.
Or perhaps Alcolopoly, in which to achieve an ultimate state of drunkenness, you set out to buy vats of different types of alcohol. Or Politicalopoly, in which you must bribe as many government officials as possible.
From the looks of the scarlet-faced father in front of me, it looked like he’d enjoy a run of Alcolopoly. The lady was now arguing with the cashier over fucken² why two bras that look exactly the fucken same were fucken ten dollars difference in fucken price. The girl was now screaming that she wanted a Cherry Ripe bar. The son simply rolled his eyes and waited for it all to end.
Looking again at my Monopoly board, I wondered how Adam would play against me. Some people can be real property hoarders when they play this game, but I guess everyone has their own playing style. For example, if John Howard was playing Monopoly, I imagine he’d steal money from the bank when nobody was looking. Inevitably he’d be caught, but would he apologise? Oh, no.
Bill Gates? Well, he’d buy out every property on the board before anyone could do anything; and complain that there weren’t enough hotels for him to fill up his properties with. He’d then arrange for further hotels to be created, and when unable to buy anything else on the board at all, would also attempt to buy the cardboard that the game is played on.
And what of Karl Suleman, CEO of the Froggy group? Well, he’d never really get past the Go square, would he.
Meanwhile, the daughter is now threatening to punch her father in his genitalia if a chocolate bar is not purchased. Chuckling, he laughs that she can’t throw a proper punch anyway, and demands she show him how she holds her fist.
‘You can’t punch like that,’ he tells her, his interest sparked. ‘Here, put your thumb outside your fist, like this.’ Never was there a happier father-daughter situation than this: parental instruction on bodily combat. As an intelligent pacifist, all the son can do is sigh once more and look towards me helplessly.
Desperate to strike up conversation of any sort and divert his attention away from his family, he points at my Monopoly box. ‘Australian edition,’ he nods thoughtfully. ‘I didn’t know there was one.’
‘Yep,’ I nod. ‘I saw a few different ones on the shelf. They’ve even got an Aussie Rules Football Monopoly, where you buy teams instead of properties.’
‘That’s kinda cool,’ he smiles.
‘What’s wrong with rugby league?’ the father demandingly booms from behind the boy.
‘There wasn’t a Monopoly game of rugby l-’ I begin.
‘Don’t you like rugby?’ the father hisses. ‘Do you like,’ he pauses before lowering his voice, ‘AFL?’
Mouth full of brown chocolatey mess, the daughter peeps over her father’s shoulder. ‘Are you some sort of poof?’ she inquires.
The young boy looks up at me with pleading eyes, desperately transmitting via ESP that he completely abhors his family and can’t stand to go out in public with them. In fact, I strongly suspect he’s concocting a game of his own which involves knocking off family members one by one.
Homicidopoly.
¹ Although for the purpose of this story, I remark on this in jest; it actually exists.
² While I’m being all wanky and using reference points, allow me to clarify my habitual use of ‘fucken’ rather than the gramatically correct ‘fucking’. Fucken is simply more fun to say.