Monopoly != me

Last night I was playing Monopoly with my son. We had a really fun time of it. He completely kicked my @$$. I mean I got SPANKED! The funny thing is that a few roles of the dice before he dominated me he was ready to give up the game. See, I had far more property than he did, including three with hotels on them. He only had one with a hotel and one with two houses but he did have three railroads. Now, if you've played Monopoly much you know that when you have a lot of property and hotels you don't have much liquid assets (i.e. cash). I was in just this situation. Well, you can guess what happened... I landed on his hotel. In order to pay the rent I had to sell all of my hotels and mortgage 75% of my property. The next roll had me land on another one of his properties with buildings. I was done for. Even mortgaging the res of my property didn't give me enough to pay. I was blown out of the water (wait; that's Battleship... Different game). Needless to say he was very happy. I reminded him that he was just about to give up and quit. Had he done so, he'd never have stomped me.

This is a pattern I've seen with him since forever (or 8 years, whichever is closest). He will try something, complain it's to hard and try to quit. He's done this with most of the PS2 games he plays. Of course, once he plays them for a little bit he becomes damn near invincible. My hope is that I can get him to always look at life in this way. If something seems to be unbeatable just keep hammering away at it. You'll eventually overcome any obstacles. It would be a little easier, though, if he didn't see his dad chewed up and spit out by the world.

I've been doing all I can to shield him from the fact that we are just about homeless with no light on the horizon. Now, I'm going to keep plugging away the best I can. But I see that the best I have isn't good enough. Just a little break, that's all I'd need to bounce back. A job; a mate; decent assistance laws or even most of my health back. Any one of these would be enough. They just look as attainable as the moon right now.