I remember playing Monster more than any other game in childhood. I remember taking it very seriously, plotting and planning even when we weren’t playing the game. My preparation for Monster bordered on fanatical at times.
But I was not playing the game to be competitive. It was essentially a game in which I tried to scare the hell out of my brothers and sisters, and I tried my very best to do so. I felt like it was my job to entertain them in the the same way a haunted house at an amusement park might entertain visitors, so I was always in search of a new hiding spot, a new place to stow away a captured sibling, and a new approach to frightening them. I was not doing this to be cruel. I knew they loved to be scared, and I wanted to do the best I could make the game fun for them.
I’m not sure if Kelli remembers, but the game was not one of our own making. My father played the game with us until my parents divorced and he moved out. The only difference was that our version of the game was played outdoors and Dad’s was played indoors.
Dad’s version of Monster was always played at night, long after the sun had gone down. The lights would be left on in the kitchen but the rest of the house would be cast in total darkness. My father would take up a hiding place somewhere in the house, and we would be charged with walking the circuit that connected kitchen to living room to parent’s bedroom to den to dining room and then back to kitchen.
Somewhere along the way, my father would strike, jumping out of hiding spots we couldn’t begin to imagine and grabbing one of us as his victim. He would place his victims in closets, under the bed or in the bathtub until someone managed to find and rescue him or her.
Sometimes we would make six of seven circuits of the house before my father would finally appear. That was when the game was at its more frightening. It was a lesson in the art of patience and the power of the unknown that I applied when playing our own version of the game.
I remember being utterly terrified as I made my way through that darkened home, but I remember loving the game as well. Nothing brought me more joy as a little boy than playing that game.
Our version of Monster was merely an extension of my father’s original conceit. With Dad gone, I assumed the role of Monster and tried to emulate him as best I could. I loved the game, but I also thought it was my obligation to continue the tradition and fill the void that had been left when Dad was no longer there to play with us.
I often think about life in terms of lasts. Too often we doing something for the final time and don’t recognize the significance of the moment. There will come a day, for example, when I pick up and carry my daughter for the last time. After that, she will have become too big and too unwieldy for me to do so.
Will I recognize the moment that happens? Probably not, and perhaps it’s better that way. The sadness of that moment might be too much to bare.
In thinking about lasts, I have often wondered what brought an end to Monster, and I have often wished that someone had told when our last game was being played. I would have liked to stop and savor that part of my childhood before it was lost forever.
The last hiding spot.
The last chase around the barn.
The last scream of a frightened sibling.
Maybe make that final moment when a young boy was trying desperately to replace the father who he no longer knew last a little bit longer.
