CHANCE! Do Not Pass Go!
Go To Jail, Do Not Collect …
Two Hundred Dollars
The Standard Monopoly deck consists of 32 Cards: 16 Community Chest and 16 Chance Cards. 1 of those Chance cards is a Go to Jail. So when you pull a Chance card, you have a 1 in 16 chance of being sent directly to jail.
Oddly enough, Chance is ranked as 39th out of 40 possible squares anyone playing Monopoly might land on with any given throw.
At least that is how I read the data in the Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly.
I think that sounds a bit low for a game board of 40 squares where three of them are Chance but I leave that to those who like math more than I do.
But consider the concept.
At anytime you can land on Chance.
You select an orange card.
1 out of 16 of those cards will send you to jail.
Any of those cards, and you have to take one, will impact your turn and could impact your game.
To much like real life except of the act of drawing your card and knowing the moment where ‘destiny takes a hand’ is upon you.
Yesterday we landed on Chance and got the Go to Jail card.
Well not jail, but the next best thing, the Emergency Room.
The how and the why is incidental to this essay but let me say that all is well.
The point being is that me and my wife and one of our sons sat in the ER waiting room from 7PM to 2AM in downtown Charleston, SC.
We sat there, that is, once we found it.
Construction changed the location of the entrance to the ER but not the information on the current road signs that direct you to the ER or in the info available in Google Maps (How many times can you hear ‘Go To the Route’ before you throw your phone out the window).
I had stop and GET OUT to ask directions THREE TIMES – once from Security in the Parking Garage – once from a EMT driver in a parked ambulance and once from a lady in the hall just to GET TO ER – the PLACE WHERE BABIES ARE BORN and the PLACE WHERE HEART ATTACK VICTIMS ‘Every Minute Counts’ Go.
But I digress as we did persevere and we did get checked in and did join the group in the waiting room in a downtown ER in a minor major American city late at night.
And I was reminded that an ER, like being on a jury, is some of the best live performance theater available in America today and that either place is the LAST place you want other people making decisions about your future …
No Haiku For You 