3rd
When I was growing up, my family would always play this board game called Aggravation, which is just like Trouble or Sorry, but much much better. It can be an infuriating game, hence its name, but really it’s all just based on luck so if you lose it’s not the end of the world. I always got such a kick out of playing it as a kid probably since it was one of those times when my family would all sit around the kitchen table and let loose. My dad would always sing “One is the loneliest number” whenever he desperately needed to roll a one. In fact my mom and him would constantly sing during this particular game, probably since there’s not much thought or strategy involved and you spend most of the time waiting for your turn to roll the dice so everyone would get restless. I remember my dad singing “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover” constantly during this game for some reason. Like my parents, I would always get silly during this game and often times would be pretty cruel to my younger sister. My goal was always to aggravate her as often as possible, which meant I would always do everything I could to have my marble take her space and send her back to her “base.” Looking back I definitely should have let up on her a little bit, but whenever I got silly I could hardly contain myself!
Once I became an adult I still really wanted Aggravation in my life so a few years ago I got my very own Aggravation game. But to my utter disappointment, the game was bought by Parker Brothers and completely changed. Instead of the classic board from the 1970s that I grew up with, now it’s a modernized piece of shit. Instead of the beautiful symmetrical spaciness and the 1970s colors, now it’s all fluorescent and is asymmetrical and as hard to follow as humanly possible. Painfully the new version also has the tagline, “The classic marble race game… only a lot cooler!” I was so disappointed in the new version that I started to look for the 1970s version and finally found one on ebay a few weeks ago. I bought it immediately and it’s probably the best 20 bucks I ever spent. Now I can enjoy my favorite board game the way it was meant to be played.