Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Connect Four, The Most Dangerous Game

Monday night I was playing Connect Four with the kids. With a five-year-old you can play by rules and have an actual game. With a five-year-old and a two-year-old, it quickly devolves into a contest to see who can shove as many red and black checkers into the slots as possible to fill up the board. When the checkers are spilled, it also becomes a bare-knuckled, scratching, screaming fight to see who can drag the most checkers into their laps. (I could have gotten the most if I really wanted to.) There was also a little bit of sticking one of the black checkers in my eye and pretending to be a pirate, which the kids then tried to imitate.

That’s not the most dangerous part, though. The most dangerous part comes in the disassembly. Our version of Connect Four is a little different from the version in the above video. As a kid I had the version in that old commercial and that think would fall apart if you breathed on it too hard. The newer version snaps together so it’s sturdier, and has a ring around the base that not only makes it more stable, but makes sure that checkers don’t go rolling all over the place when you slide open the bottom of the board.

I had it all taken apart except for the last side. It didn’t want to come free, but I had to get it off to store it back in the box. I applied a little more pressure (I didn’t want to break anything so I was trying to be careful) and the support leg came away from the board in a sudden jerk. My thumb was in the way and the dull bit of plastic that was sticking out dug in.

I tell you people, watch out for Connect Four, otherwise, this could happen to you!

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