“Okay, so what do you want to play next?” Gary asked with an eager smile.
Jamie looked up from the gaming table to the more than 1,320 board games that lined the shelves that lined the walls of their spectacular gaming room.
When the lockdown hit, Gary had gotten a glow in his eye and said, “Bring it on!” If anybody was ready to make the best of being shut in for who knows how long, it was the two of them.
After weeks spent with a higher average level of joy than probably most people on the planet, and faced with the need to choose the next game, Jamie eyed them, left to right, up and down, scanning, searching, round and round the room, for the first time feeling like nothing was jumping out at her.
Except for the one she was ready to say again.
The moment Gary had said “Bring it on!” that first day, Jamie immediately named a game. And Gary immediately responded by declaring, “Do not mention that game again. Until this is over. And maybe not even then.”
And she hadn’t. All this time.
And now, she was silent in response to his query.
“Come on, which one?”
But now, there was a glow starting to light her own eye.
Gary sensed it coming. “No,” he said.
“Yes,” she said.
“No, not that one.”
“Yes, that one.”
“I said no!”
And with that, Jamie let loose.
“You want to just keep playing games and thinking we’re having a grand old time, fine by me. You want to keep ignoring that one, fine by me. But then you’re gonna have to get on the internet, get on the phone, whatever you need to do to find other people to game with. Because the next game I want to play is the one that was our favorite game before we even met each other, our favorite game to play together, the game we fell in love playing and always loved to play until this whole thing started, the one that’s about people cooperating in the face of adversity to—“
“Don’t say it!”
“—survive—“
“Don’t say it!”
“—a global—“
“I said don’t say it!”
“—pandemic!”
“No!”
“Yes, Gary, Pandemic! Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, Pandemic, Pandemic, Pandemic! Because games are fantastic and you love them and I love them and we love them together and I love being shut in playing games with you but you can’t run away from this, Gary, and it’s our favorite freakin’ game, Gary, and you’ve taken that away from us, and I’m through letting you do that, because I can’t think of a better game to play, because it’s the best freakin’ game that anybody ever invented, and because I can’t think of a better attitude that I’d want to have than people working together to stomp out a pandemic, because that’s the most appropriate and inspiring thing I can think to do right now, and I want to strategize with you and scream with you and kill those freakin’ diseases and win that freakin’ game right freakin’ now!”
Gary stared at her blankly for a solid minute before leaving the room.
Jamie stayed. She slumped at the game table.
Sixteen minutes later, Gary came back in.
And they played the best freakin’ game of Pandemic they’d ever played.
And then they ordered whole new copies of Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2.