Lately, I’ve been having fun breaking out some of the old board games from my childhood. I’ve been holding on to these games for the past few decades, lugging them with me each time I moved. Now that my oldest is almost five, I’ve started introducing him to them.

All that lugging was worth it. I started out with Spirograph, but he wasn’t quite ready for that one yet. He really enjoyed Tilt, however. Last week I decided to bring out MouseTrap. That’s the one where you build a big complicated mousetrap as you move around the board. When you get to the end, you try to catch each other in the trap. We set it up on the floor in the den and played it there while his brother napped in their room.

He won, of course. I’ve always been lousy at rolling dice.

As the big plastic cage rattled down to catch my mouse, he jumped up off the floor. “I caught you! I caught you!”

“Yep, congratulations. Great game!”

“Oh yeah, great game,” he said, looking disappointed. We’ve been working on sportsmanship, and he’s not that big a fan. Then his mom came walking in. “Look mom! Look! I won! I caught daddy!”

“You sure did.”

“Yeah!” He sat back looking at the game, and then he just couldn’t keep it in any longer. He looked at me: “your mouse was a girl mouse.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Your mouse was a girl mouse. You were playing a little girl mouse.”

His mom burst out laughing, which of course, only inspired him to greater heights of trash-talking.

I picked up the game. Had I really spent the last 30 years keeping this game safe just so I could be abused by my four year old?

Sheesh. Next week I’m bringing the chess board down. Then we’ll see who has the little girl pieces!