My Best Friend Cheats At Board Games

That’s right. I’m calling her out!

Watching the two little guys I’m watching play with each other, I was reminded of when I caught my best friend Audra cheating at Monopoly.

For an introduction to Audra read this post:

I Have A Stonking Best Friend

It is my belief that Audra has absolutely no idea how many life lessons I’ve learned from her over the years. As

kids, I idealized her to a rather high degree, mainly because she had this long, long straight blonde hair and I thought she looked like a princess. I always wanted to look like a princess. Later, over the years, she would take me on adventures I would never dared to set out on all by myself. She taught me the art of sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to attend parties. She taught me how to put make-up on and pretty much everything I know about fashion. She introduced me to black-and-white movies, and it was because of her that I started listening to some of my favorite musicians that I still listen to today. In school, concepts that I struggled with in chemistry and the like, she breezed through without a hitch. I’d have to say, she was kind of my hero. She was (and is) an awesome Human Being.

So, imagine my surprise when I caught her cheating at a board game we were playing. She was robbing the bank when we were playing Monopoly. Over the years, I had a feeling she was cheating…I mean, I can’t lose every single game I played with her, right? But, because I loved her so much, I would dismiss that feeling, deciding I had to be wrong about it.

But there is no denying I saw her take the money!! I was stunned. I immediately pointed out that I had seen her cheat, and to my surprise, she was quick to admit it. “Any thing worth winning is worth cheating for,” were her words, while laughing hysterically at my horror. Even worse, she wouldn’t put the money back!! She was a Self-Acknowledged Cheater!! I guess all these years she’d been waiting for me to catch on, and when it finally happened, it was a fun joke on me…

I love Audra. I don’t have to pretend not to see her flaws to love her as a whole person. Pretending that someone you love is perfect, and refusing to see what you may not like about them, isn’t loving them unconditionally. The relationships in my life now are based on an honesty about each other, and an empathy and understanding that we are all falling short in this life. And in turn, Audra takes me the way I am too. My faults are pretty depressing to me sometimes, but her ability to refuse to see them as the sum total of who I am has made me be able to relegate them to the correct importance in my life.

So, if Audra wants to cheat on board games when we play, that’s fine. I’ll just have to watch her closer, that’s all!!

— Bird