Unfinished Monopoly – Back Story – Jenny 53

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The Hat was doing well. It wouldn’t be right to say it was winning as theme was still only half way through, but it was certainly looking good. It had property, had built hotels and was looking forward to the unwary traveller who, with their sights set on ‘Go’ would fall into the investments made just before that location. It was a honey trap by any reckoning. Just when you thought you were home and dry there you were. Bankrupt.

This was a familiar outcome and one which the players of this game were used to. The Hats’ tactics were pretty much the same each time and it was a surprise they continued to work so well. You’d have thought the Car and the Boot would have caught on by now. But then Jenny and her parents were a family of habits and if everything didn’t go according to one of those habits then either something had gone very wrong or something was pretty pointless.

The game’s commentary was the same as usual.

“Look out!” said her dad, each time she took up the die, “Here comes Money Bags!”

“Don’t call her that,” said her mum.

“I don’t care about those,” said her dad, of Jenny’s hotel complexes, “I just want the train stations.”

“Imagine if all this was real money,” said her mum.

The game was meant to go on to midnight - or ten minutes to -  at which point they’d total up their winnings, call Jenny the winner and see in the New Year. But as the time approached, Jenny felt this New Year should be different.

The fact that she was even here was annoying. Her friends were out, taking as much advantage as possible of the freedom their parents offered them. They were exploring the bars and even the clubs of the town, the ones that would let them in, the ones where they sounded convincing, the ones that either didn’t care or actually did care about giving young people a good time. And here she still was. Stuck at home because her parents thought it was best. Because they didn’t think she should go out on the most busy and, they thought, dangerous night of the year. Because of habit.

Deciding to undermine this state of affairs, Jenny started reversing her game. She made some very bad business decisions. She stopped concentrating her finances in one area and started spreading her portfolio, which in certain circumstances might have been a good idea, but in the context of the game just spread her resources thinner and thinner until she had a property of every colour, earning her a meagre few pounds if anyone landed on one, rather than a thumping rent bill.

She mis-counted her steps around the board, landing herself in jail a couple of times and forking out for fines, rents and penalties when she knew very well she could have avoided them. She was certainly losing money, but curiously she was still in the lead. No matter how badly she played, no matter how purposefully badly she played, her parents seemed to be pitching themselves under her.

After 30 minutes of this she called them on it. “Are you just trying to make me win?” she asked.

“We don’t have to, Money Bags,” said her dad. “You do it every time!”

“But…” Jenny began, wondering whether to confess to her current attempted losing streak.

“Don’t know why we play this game,” said her mum, jovially, as she always did. “It always works out the same and I think it just gives you bad habits. ” 

“So why are we playing it?” asked Jenny, abruptly. “Why? Why are we sat here doing this again, like we did last year and the year before that and the year before..? I know it’s tradition or something, but we don’t have to. Honestly. Not for me.”

Her father had that smile on his face. The one that said he heard her and he thought she was right, but he wasn’t about to do anything about it, least of all admit she was right. But now Jenny didn’t care, she’d tell them what she thought if it made a difference to them or not.

“I don’t want to be Money Bags,” she began. “I don’t want to be the one who builds the first hotel and I don’t like the way you hold back when you can perfectly well build stuff yourselves. It’s like you’re letting me win. Which you are, right?”

“I think it makes you think about money and sums and lots of things,” said her mum. “And we only play it for fun. That’s all isn’t it?”

“Is it? I mean is it actually fun? Are you really having fun? I don’t want this - I wanted to go out tonight, to see my mates, to be out. That’s my idea of fun. I’m sorry if you don’t get it.”

She got up to go to bed. There really wasn’t anything else to do and waiting for the New Year wasn’t going to change anything.

“I thought we knew what made you happy,” added her mum, visibly deflating as she spoke.

“It used to. Maybe. Perhaps. I’m not sure any more,” said Jenny. “But this isn’t working now.” 

She left them in the sitting room and was halfway upstairs when she realised this was the time when everything could change. She’d already started the process so why not take it further?

She went back downstairs where her parents were silently putting the game back into its box and told them about the girl she loved.