Have you heard the story about Rook and Kickball?

My siblings and I, like most families, are very competitive and love to play games when ever we get together. Dad was the main instigator in our gaming passion, but it was years before we realized just how integral he was in how we played the game.
When I was in high school I'd have friends over for game nights and it didn't take long to notice I was playing every game all wrong. You see, regular rules aren't good enough for my dad. He rewrote the rules to Risk because it wasn't challenging enough. Yes, our game board has hand written numbers on each country signifying how many pieces you must have to retain control and the animal characters have been aptly named Flipper and Moby Dick.
Rook is by far the game of choice for each family gathering but again, we don't play like "normal" people. I've been told that we follow the rules of Oh Heck, but never having played that game I can't be sure. My dad has a complicated scoring system that calculates the number of tricks you've bid with the number of cards dealt to create a magic number. What this really means is that he's the only person who can keep score and far too often has a top score.
Being a family of geeks and Trekkies, we aren't usually into sporting activities. The one exception is kickball. Some of my favorite summer memories are of my sisters and I dodging the ball when dad tried to get us out. Tried, who am I kidding? He had much better aim than we had sense of direction!
Over Memorial weekend we gathered the whole family in the park behind dad's house and had a mega game of kickball. Twelve kids and ten adults make for some interesting plays. It's fun to have a nine year old pitching, a two year old rounding the bases (whether it's his turn or not) and grandpa heckling grandma while she prepares to kick. I chose to not remember who won the kickball game, after all it really only matters that we got to play.
We've been lucky enough to have several game nights this summer, with more siblings in town than at random intervals as well as our favorite Uncle Mark and Aunt Deb. I'm glad we had extra time together, but sad that a few are going their separate ways again soon. I guess summer fun has to end sometime, but I'll keep the Rook cards handy.

(updated 8/21/10)