There are quite a few posters I have seen over the years that start with the title "All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in..." or something to that effect.  While playing a game of Dicecapades the other night with Mom, Lydia and Nathan, I started thinking about all the things I have learned while playing this game:

• I can't stack dice worth beans. 
• Mary can stack dice worth beans - even the teeny-tiny ones that make everyone else curse and cringe.  (For the record: Mom does not curse.)
• My mental acuity and memory levels go down 90% when there is a timer involved.  Guaranteed.
• Mom has "guns"!  (She beat Lydia at arm-wrestling that night.)
• Any child's eyes will start bugging out the moment they catch sight of this game that has 100+ dice.
• Just because you think you can draw does NOT mean you will be successful at drawing in this game.  Not when "Chairman Mao" comes up as your phrase to draw.
• Nathan is incredibly good at doing math quickly, in any form.
• I love trivia! But I dislike trivia questions about computers - who cares about what Steve Wozniak or Bill Gates did for jobs as teenagers?
• Steven and Leslie excel at any challenge involving letters or words.  Even if it is to write five words containing the letters Q, Z, and O in thirty seconds - they're both amazing at it!
• This game cannot be played at any time when someone is trying to sleep or needs to hear the the TV or is just trying to concentrate in general.  They won't be able to due to the loud bursts of laughter and shouting from the table.  (Sorry in advance for the next time it happens!)
• You'd better be in decent physical shape - pushups, situps, or running from room to room can and will be required in the well-rounded game.

Lydia takes on Nate first...

Regardless of the outcome - and I have never come close to even winning one yet - it is such a fun and enjoyable game.  I will always want to play it again and again.  Maybe because it's taught me most of all that I am a glutton for punishment, even at the hands of my very capable, fun, and cute family.