Games are hard to play from the instructions.
Case in point, I purchased a Croquet set a few years ago to play with my children. I figured, six boys and a ball game played with life-sized wooden hammers, what can go wrong? Sure, there are always concussions and window replacement to deal with, but name something that is fun that doesn't involve at least one of the two.
Of course, I didn't actually know how to play the game. So I broke one of the primary Real Man Rules and read the instructions. And now I know why we don't generally, as a gender, bother with such nonsense.
I set up two stakes and nine wickets about the way they looked in the instructions. But then following the play rules, while not overly complicated, didn't really get me in to the game much. Or the boys. It appeared to all of us to be, frankly, a pathetic game.
Some time later, I got involved in a match between two family friends (apparently they have a grudge match going that goes back many years), and I learned the real joy in the competition:
It lies in the 'Roquet', striking another players ball. You see, once you hit someone else's ball, a world of options opens up.
My personal favorite is that when one hits another's ball, he may "place his own ball side by side with the struck ball. Then placing his foot on his own ball, strike it so as to move the other ball without moving his own."
In plain English, and thanks in part to the universal laws of physics outlined by Sir Isaac Newton, you now have permission to send their playing piece in to geosynchronous orbit. Of course, the amount of force you determine to send to your opponent's ball must pass, via hammer, within the immediate vicinity of your own foot, so some coordination is required. Given my athletic prowess, no one will be surprised that I limped for about a week after attempting this the first time. (Real Man Rules also prohibit going to see Doctors).
Now, can you imagine if other games were played like croquet?
Monopoly would be way more fun: "Oh, I'm sorry, you landed on Park Place, and I own that. You owe me $500 and I get to shoot your thimble at the neighbor's Rottweiler with a slingshot."
Of course this wouldn't make any sense for some games. In hockey, for example, knocking your opponent's teeth across the blue line is already as expected as it was for a 69 Charger to cross the county line a couple of times in every episode of Dukes of Hazzard.
And in golf, well, you needn't send my ball in to oblivion, I'll do it just fine all by myself, when I tee off into the nearest water obstacle, sand trap, or bank of trees. (At worst, it is not uncommon for me to be recovering my ball from the fairway of a different hole altogether.)
Now, lest I take credit for someone else's idea, this "make other games like Croquet" isn't an original thought. Clearly someone already had this in mind when they took the otherwise mind-numbing game of "Frisbee" and added shotguns, resulting in the more therapeutic sport called "Trap-shooting". I would like to shake their hand.
Now, I leave it to you to determine what else in this world could be improved by a more creative application of Newtonian Physics.
In the mean time, you should buy a Montpelier 6-Player Croquet Set. Invite your neighbors, and you could be the next Hatfield-McCoy story!
