“Master, when do we return to Transylvania? I grow weary of this world.”

Games are an important tool in the development of the human child and even as adults we do not outgrow their attraction. In fact many grow up to manufacture the games of a new generation. My first husband was a chess master and if you have ever played the game with any interest then you will realize how humiliating and counter productive it can be to lose continually. A game needs a learning curve and that curve should build gradually to the point where the participant has mastered the skills necessary to the best of their ability. At this point there has to be a manifestation of their achievement either in a scoreboard or the personal satisfaction of beating a known opponent.

I taught my friend’s teenage son to play chess and many years later he informed me that one of the high spots of his life was the time that he finally won a game from me. I never had that satisfaction from my ex husband and to this day I no longer play. Childish in its way, which is a strange overused statement. Children apply the ‘not fair’ rule to anything that stands in their way, but then so do the majority of adults. My moment of satisfaction came when one year we bought the board game Risk and played it non-stop for twenty-four hours. It took that long for me to form a tactic that ultimately defeated him and then we never played the game again. I guess that proves that we all hate to lose, particularly when we feel a certain amount of superiority to others.

Some people like to move outside the structured safe area of games, or maybe they are just not as good at certain games as others, (this is a hypothesis that requires further deliberation), and they prefer to play with the lives of real people. This gives them a feeling of being powerful and in control of their own narrow existences. This is one reason why the manipulators and bullies exist and why they self perpetuate their nastiness in a never ending drive to achieve mastery over others. The trouble occurs when the would be masters are the puppets of other would be masters. You can “cry havoc and let slip the hounds of war” but then you have to take some responsibility for the damage that those beings inflict, and it is not uncommon for the rabid pack to turn on those that have thrust them out upon the world.

I see the three-headed dog is back and this time the puppet master’s strings are even more visible. The name of the game is divide and conquer but the trouble is most of the participants have not mastered Risk yet let alone World Domination. As usual there is one amongst them that is attempting to be intelligent. Always a bad mistake when your English language skills are not up to par, but then everyone has to commit to their own learning curve in this life. True to the type they are also producing a satellite of neophyte bullies who are drawn like jackals to where the hounds feed. You could say that they live in Interesting Times but I hear that that is a curse.