Your childhood with Mrs. Mooney sounds like something out of a Judy Blume novel, Erin. Everyone should have a Mrs. Mooney for a while.

There is only Scrabble. I grew up with Candyland, Life, Monopoly and assorted card games, but Scrabble is the only game I love. One problem with games based on chance is that my sister is much luckier than I am. The problem with Life was that I had to be a little pink pin, which I hated. (My hated of pink began very early.) The problem with Monopoly, which rather foreshadowed my later career, was that I usually bought all the utilities and went bankrupt.

A toast to Audrey Mooney; Mrs. Badenoch, who always had soft peppermints with green centers in a pressed glass candy dish and treated children as honored guests; Miss Lucy, who ran a small candy store just to be around children, and all the other grandparents by chance.

It was sweet. Her nephew lived in SF, and when he visited, he brought us tons of cheap stuff from Chinatown that we adored -- little silk coin purses, fans, dolls, paper garlands.

Her cat was this huge pampered white calico, very soft and fluffy and haughty. Her name was Sweetie.

Giant eyeball sculpture in Chicago

Liese, it's all yours!

I kinda want to get chutes and ladders for mac. the pictures would be a good visual for him of actions....consequences. I am so very glad that we have the old versions of many board games, like clue and milles bornes (which yes, we called mills borns) and mastermind. We will be starting a game night once a week in Texas with the grandparents. I am VERY excited.

We just cleared out a bunch of games. I know we still have Backgammon, Mancala, chess, checkers...

I was wondering if there is any way possible that Helen Thomas was just being old and crotchety

"I introduced Agnew to the ways of love, dammit! I can say what I want!"

Awesome.

I used to play Life with kids I babysat for. I always lost spectacularly. I always ended with billions of children and no money