INSTRUCTIONS
1 Player, and that player is you. You are totally being played.
Ages 14 to Adult
NOTE: You will not actually feel like an adult. While this is around the age where you can legally star in a porno, you are absolutely forbidden to drink your parent’s leftover liquor in the privacy of their basement with your soon-to-be alcoholic frenemy named Caitlynn, except she spells it with an ‘8’ on all of her social media platforms.
OBJECT
Collect high school diploma so you can leave as quickly as possible from the unexciting, barren town that your parents thought would be a viable option for breeding and subsequently raising their offspring. Should’ve accepted that job offer on the Big Island, Dad. But no, you had to “stay near the family” all so Mom could continue her weekly Bingo Night with Nana and Aunt Jeanine. Where exactly is Nana right now, Mom? That’s right, she’s playing the slots with Jesus and the Holy Ghost. You people sicken me.
CONTENTS
Spinner ring, spinner dial and spinner arm
25 LIFE tiles
4 Textbooks
5 Notebooks
Overpriced binders of various girth
Dividers
Less than the recommended 8 hours of sleep
Scoliosis
Lean, picturesque lockers
Advanced projector technology that your Calculus teacher will spend fifteen minutes trying to operate before realizing that she had previously unplugged it to make room for her “World’s Greatest Teacher” mug
Food?
Handouts
Lots and lots of handouts
SETTING UP
Pick out a cute locker-mirror at Target so you can keep your lip gloss looking fresh and alluring throughout the day. Scratch that. Just buy one at the dollar store. It’s going to pretty much fall apart anyway after a few weeks of overly dramatic locker-door slamming. Can you believe Stacey said that? I actually can, if I’m being honest. I mean, you did sleep with her boyfriend of 3-and-a-half weeks. That’s almost a whole month of raw commitment that you single-handedly soiled in the back of a Ford Fiesta. I guess I can’t blame you. That sounds like a nice fiesta to me.
What was I going to say? Oh, right. Before school starts, go to your local department store for a new backpack. Your current one smells like the middle school gymnasium, and no one wants to relive that. Get something that says, “I’m a good student when I need to be, but I also know how to let loose every once in a while. Call me.” The only reason I say to go to the department store is because the dollar store draws the line at backpacks, apparently, even though I’m pretty sure you can buy a bundle of lawn flamingoes there for an excellent bargain. Did I mention that you won’t have lots of money to throw around while you’re in high school? Because you won’t.
Next, you will need to get organized if you want to be ready to learn. Place the dividers in your binder in the intended order. You will probably end up using a couple of the tabs for, like, a month before giving up and stuffing everything between the pages of your Honors Physics textbook. Why did you decide to take Honors Physics again? To challenge yourself? Yeah, good luck with that.
GAMEPLAY
All players find the strength to climb out of bed in the morning. Those with their own transportation reap the benefits of said transportation. Everyone else dies a little inside. Youngest players cry first. Crying then continues clockwise.
On Monday through Friday, appear at the bus stop around 7 in the morning, give or take a few precious minutes. Your bus driver will either arrive too early or too late. Either way, you are screwed. You will suffer at the hands of a vicious, unforgiving winter, OR your heartbroken mother, who can’t believe she is going to be late for work again. She doesn’t ask that much of you, you know. She wants you to start listening again. You used to be such a good little kid who ate all of his vegetables and liked to scrapbook on Sundays with Mommy. Now you spend all day in your bedroom doing God knows what. How can you even think with that music playing so loud? Anyway, if you do end up driving in with your mom, she will ask when you intend to start acting like a real family again. Then it is your turn to spin the wheel. The number the spinner lands on is the number of months it will take to get her to stop bringing you up to her coworkers.
HOW TO WIN
After all players have graduated, all players will go to college, or the military or whatever, or delude themselves into thinking that they will make it into professional hockey. You know the odds of that are very slim, right? Okay, just checking.
Then, after x years apart (you have to spin the wheel to find out the exact number), some players return for your high school reunion. All players in attendance turn their LIFE tiles message-side up and add up the dollar amounts shown on their tiles. You can judge the winner based on highest dollar amount, but as long as your nemesis since freshman year has become somewhat more fat, poor, or ugly…