Chloe said, “Hey Mommy, let’s play a game!”

 
Before I could come up with any reasonable excuse other than “Mommy’s eyes are closed while I’m doing these dishes because daylight savings time hasn’t been kind to me,” I noticed she had already set up the Monopoly Junior board. Dealing approximately ¾ of the available dollar bills to herself, assigning two to me and rigging the Chance cards so she would be awarded with free “parties” (the adult Monopoly game equivalent of properties) whenever she landed on that square.

 
I noticed the cheating before we started but I decided to play anyway because I thought we could talk about being a good sport and the importance of fair play, how we feel when our opponent has stacked the deck and maybe, just maybe I would figure out what she meant when she told me her class was doing a play of “The Three Little Pigs” and she was playing “the brick.”

 
After a couple of loops around the board, Chloe was winning. By a lot and not a Monopoly lot, I mean she had a substantial lead.

 
I left my stack of money unattended that had accumulated to significantly more than the pittance she had dealt me but was still lower than her bankroll.

 
I expected her to steal some or all of my money when I left the room.

 
I don’t know why I thought this was going to happen. (It might be because Greg moves his pegs forward whenever we play cribbage). I was mad at myself for thinking she was going to cheat and then madder when I was surprised she hadn’t.

 
When I returned to the room she was carefully examining the board. She hadn’t lied about what number she rolled or moved pieces around or removed any of mine.
She said, “It’s your turn, Mom so get rolling!”

 
Before I could tell her I was proud of her for playing the game so well she interrupted me with a dance while she threw some of her money in the air and laughed like a crazy person, “I am the Queen of Winning! Yee-Haw!”

 
There might be a lesson in there somewhere.

 
As I said, I was really tired.