Of Boys and their Toys

One of our First Year Students has developed a new version of an old game.

The boy First Year student recently received some green plastic army men (found at the thrift shop for a terrific price). There are three sets, a small light green group (made in China), a small dark green squadron (made in Hong Kong), and a third set of larger soldiers. These are about four times larger than the others.

He’s decided to play checkers with them. He uses the regular old checkers board and plays checkers in the usual way, but with army men instead of checkers. The dark green soldiers are his, and his sister takes the light green. Anytime a soldier makes it across the board to be crowned, that small soldier is traded in for one of the larger, Godzilla sized soldiers.

I asked him what this game was called, and I got one of those “Are you for real?” looks.

He replied in carefully modulated tones- he doesn’t want me to know how silly he finds the question.

“War Checkers”

Of course.