Epilog

Epilog — Fetching

The puppy sat in his mother’s place. She had a restaurant style breakfast “nook” that was perfect for playing all sorts of board games. The young dog loved board games or any kind really. His actual favorites were from Metagaming like GEV, Ogre or Melee; however, only a few folks at school would play those. Here, the pup’s newly installed stepdad from England, had a wide variety of board games. Stepdad had spent all sorts of time at sea; therefore, he’d developed a board game habit out of pure need.

We’d played various versions of mah jong and he had strange games with complex rulesets like horse racing or shipping lines. That said, the pup always liked simple abstract games like chess, othello or, in this case, nine-men’s-morris.

Stepdad rolled out the board. It was a hexagon versus the normal square. This led to a longer game versus the normal version, but the pup eye balled it for some moments. They played. It was very close. The pup stared hard at the board a bit as the stepdad told stories of the music playing or, in case of the absolutely cryptic comedians, some hope of comprehension. To the pup, the sounds of the comedians were no better than pure “YAHOO!” and no real words.

The next game was less close. The stepdad talked about his trips to various ports around the world and what difference he had seen in his world travels. He certainly had been mostly everywhere, but interestingly, mainly at the ports of call versus tourist cities. That said, the pup noticed that his stepfather did take time to travel for pleasure as well. The elder loved a long drive and that meant serious distances. There were hours of tapes where the dog drove across the United States in a car somewhat non-stop. As in, drive all day until dark, sleep, get up at dawn and repeat.

The pup had completely mastered this variant. They had played enough at this point. The youth was relentless and created cascades that ended the games in complete routs. Both were getting bored as they’d played this one game about thirty or forty times in a row. Perhaps more. It was reasonable to test out various choices, but it was clear that the person who moved first won. This was no longer a game but now, more like, a completely solved jigsaw puzzle.

The stepdad rolled up the game and asked, “Did you enjoy the game?”

The pup was delighted with the game and honestly reported, “It was great!”

The elder laughed as he looked for yet another in his collection. “It sure was,” he said.