Store, Tornado and Monopoly

My nephew, Mark, visited Minnesota from San Francisco last week. I hadn’t seen him in a couple years. We are only five years apart so he was more like a little brother to me when we were growing up in the Twin Cities. When we were young, we would play store, bus and tornado. Store and bus we could play in his room, but tornado was played at my parents’ backyard. There was a steep hill in the backyard and tornado consisted of flailing around frantically and falling-rolling down the hill. And then doing that over and over again. As we grew older, we also played Monopoly. He was the big entrepreneur and always got Broadway and Park Place and usually won. One time when we were kids Mark said something about that I wasn’t playing with him enough that day. I said to him, “I played store, tornado and Monopoly with you!” So we still say that to each other to this day. He’s 45-years-old (although admits to only 38) and I just turned 51 (although really 37). He says he can’t figure out how he got older than me. I say, yes that is one of life’s mysteries.