Ah French class. The weird cousin of school subjects. In a typical EMS afternoon, students were given a reprieve from classes, and instead would learn new things from various exploratories. An interesting program if done correctly. Today’s agenda would be to take off the shackles that were Math and Social Studies, and learn new skills by playing board games. Yep, good old EMS. Again, I’m not sure what we were supposed to learn, but I wasn’t about to complain.

Anyway, back to French class. It seems that today’s session of board games would be hosted by the French room, No worries really, except it seemed that we arrived late and most of the games (ie, The BEST games) were already being used. There were only three games left. As the story goes, the Hippo in the House game was missing it’s hippo, and nobody was interested in EdnaCrabopoly. There was only one game left, and it was French.

I think it is very important to say that although we did take French in school, none of us were really good at it. Not that our marks reflected that, but that’s not important. I just wanted to say that I did well, marks wise in French. Yay Matt!

There it was, Condo-Mania! Of course, given the fact that we were in Grade 7, the name was automatically changed to Condom-Ania. Basically it was similar to the Monopoly board with properties and a bunch of miscellaneous spaces. So all we had to do was read the instructions, and we’d be ready to go. However, we weren’t about to get out our French/English dictionary just to figure out this Monopoly rip-off. There was only one thing we could do, come up with our own rules. And man oh man, were they something else!

Right off the start, it was every man for himself. And we weren’t just playing against each other, no, no, no, we were playing against DEATH itself! The stakes were higher than ever before. The object of the game was to make it around the board for one rotation without dying. Seems simple enough, right? WRONG! DEAD WRONG! Remember all of those non-property spaces? In Monopoly, they’d be things like Luxury Tax, Community Chest or various railroads. In Condo-Mania, they were things like cars, boxers, or fishermen. In Condom-Ania, though, they would KILL you. That’s right, in a move similar to that in Ghostbusters, whatever you landed on would come and kill you.

So basically, it was a survival of the fittest, winner takes all, sole survivor like game. Basically the round would go until there was only one player left alive. But wait, there’s more! If you were lucky and nimble enough to make it around the board for a complete rotation, you would be given money. Money that could be used in other rounds to buy off Death. That’s right, Death could be bought of for the right price. And that was basically it. Whoever could be the Last Man Standing for the most rounds that afternoon would be the Champion of Condom-Ania.

What a game. How Milton Bradley and the Parker Bros. Missed out on this game is still a mystery to me. That of course is assuming that they monitor middle schools in the Annapolis Valley.

Special Bonus

I couldn’t very well allow you to read this article without giving you a taste of what Condom-Ania was like. Therefore I present to you…

Condom-Aina 2005

Take the wildest adventure of your life, dodging death at every turn, all in pursuit of the all mighty dollar. How else can you buy off death at the hands of Angela, Skeletor, or the insidious Bill Lumbergh? Only the strong survive in this incredible adventure, easily the most exciting game you will ever play in your life!

And how would any Condom-Ania game be complete without the funds to buy off death? Now that’s a quality legal tender!

Godspeed!