Mushrooming
In my youth, i.e. in the 90s, board games were much less popular than they are today. There were probably several dozen titles available on the market, most of them not particularly different from each other. We rolled six-sided dice, moved on a fairy-tale, castle or racetrack-style board, and read instructions from individual fields, which told us to go back, go forward, make another throw or wait for a queue. One of my favorite games, Mushroom Picking, looked quite similar. In this board game, mushrooms were a variety, which had to be properly arranged. We also found out which of them were edible and which were not. It didn’t matter who reached the finish line first, but who had the most good mushrooms in the basket at the end. As I am an only child, and my friends could not always come to me, my mother often had to play with me.
She bravely endured the moment when I was bringing the box, setting everything on the table and asking her for one more round in the imaginary forest. She always found time for me. Although it happened that her role ended with a throw and returning to preparing dinner. Then I was moving her pawn and, when she couldn’t see, I cheated. She probably knew I was doing it and was just letting me win. All in all, it made me prefer to play with her than with my watchful dad, who didn’t stop at all. – Piotr Markiewicz