We are allowed though to get a fresh pair of dice. Next to the game is a brown cardboard box filled with dice and each pair is tightly wrapped in cellophane. There must be a 100 pair of dice in the box. Helen changes dice at the beginning of each new game. Coach will change dice sometimes five, six, or seven times in a game if he feels his dice are jinxed for some reason. When he gets a long string of bad throws, he’ll fling the dice across the room, call them “dumb dice” and grab a fresh pair of dice wrapped in cellophane from the box. I have been using the same pair of dice since I have been playing.
We are in the middle of a game and it is Coach’s turn to throw the dice. He shakes the dice in his hand for a long time before he lets them fly onto the board. When he gets a good throw, he will bring his hands together with a loud triumphant clap, but when he gets a bad throw, his fist slams the table that make the pawns vibrate on the board. Coach is not a good loser.
I do not like the game Parcheesi. I am impatient to end this game. Somehow I feel a strange sense of optimism that perhaps this will be our last game and we’ll be allowed to leave this room. But then, I have felt optimistic before, that every game would be our last game.
As the game continues, my mind drifts as the others take their turn. I wonder why Coach has red pawns and Helen has blue? My color is green though I would have preferred having red or blue over green. Though we are allowed to change dice any time we wish, it seems that we are not allowed to change the color of our pawns though I haven’t inquired about it.
I begin to count the number of spaces along the board and see that a player must go 72 spaces from start to finish. There are 12 safety zones colored in powder blue where a pawn can stand without the fear of an opposing player capturing it. I also notice there is an area on the board where a fourth player can play. I wonder why there are just three of us playing rather than four? I wonder if Coach or Helen know why there aren’t four players playing this game.