The Moonwalk

My daughter has been interested in creating board games recently.   She creates games for me to play verbally with her while I drive her to and from school.   The game board is a grid of magnetic balls that would typically be used by a child to make low-resolution pictures.  My daughter can extend the usability of this grid to be much more. 

She created something that reminded me of the Game of Life the other day.   When she returned from school the following day, I suggested we play the real board game so she could experience some of the parts of the game I'd talked to her about.  

The version of the game I have is the one I grew up with and is a bit worse for wear.   The little stick people were shortened in some cases where I'd chewed off some of the length to represent a child.   Other than that, the game was as playable as it was when I was young. 

My daughter loved playing and today, when we headed off to school again, she set up the game to play on her grid.   I started off (I'm the only player in these games) and got the job of being a doctor.   I was robbed and then I got married.  

She followed the protocol of the real game at this point, saying, "now we have to figure out how much you get for wedding presents."   After that, she said I got a free turn and could move one to ten spaces of my choosing for my moonwalk.  

I had no idea what she was talking about until I remembered the real game, after getting married, you got to take a bonus turn to go on your "honeymoon".

The Big Boy Update:  I told my son I was proud of him and couldn't believe I had a fifth-grader.   He insisted, despite my logic, that he wasn't a fifth-grader yet.   He wouldn't be one until the first day of school.   He was a rising fifth-grader, and that was that.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is in the tub getting clean after being outside riding her bicycle—all by herself with no adult supervision.    She was going up and down the street just in front of the house, but it took a special kind of self-control to let her do so without hovering and worrying.   She put everything away, closed the garage door, and came in when she was done like this was nothing unusual for an almost completely blind child to do.