I visited my family this week and I went to see my grandma, and one of the things my grandma taught me was how to play Yahtzee so I got my kids to play it too with grandma.
My grandma lives in a 100-year-old house. She’s 95. It’s not the house she grew up in, in fact, we like to say that her and my grandfather bought the house when it was old, they bought it in 1960, the house was 40 years old then. The thing with Grandma’s house is that the house isn’t the only thing old, everything is old.
The scorecard looks like this. This is an old version, probably from 1956, but the general goal and scoring are the same:
Her Triple Yahtzee had a 1980s date on it and was bought at Kmart for $1.76.
And then I found this game called Challenge Yahtzee which honestly I’ve never played and we didn’t play this time either because it was super fragile and would have disintegrated at the touch.
I took the dice from that game, and then we went so hard, one of the dice crumbled.1
I didn’t do so hot at my game, I settled too quickly for 2 two’s and 2 fours and didn’t even get the bonus at the top. You get 3 chances to roll and no matter what you get, you have to put a score down somewhere, even if it’s a zero. And then my eldest daughter won anyway, so Yahtzee is secure for another generation at least.
These past few times I’ve been to Grandma’s, I may go 1x or 2x a year, I record a few snippets of conversation, this time about her family trying to milk cows for their dairy business and last time about a grocery store ran when she was a kid.
I don’t have to tell you that we won’t have many more times to play Yahtzee.
Bonus:
Did you know there was a knockoff Yahtzee game called Kismet, with very similar scoring? I didn’t either until this trip, my infinite trip to Grandma’s and so you always learn something new
Double Bonus:
This is one of at least 3 old TVs my grandma has. The Yahtzee scorecards are stored in that very cabinet.
Keep going-
Josh Spilker
Okay it was probalby just old