Stop Thief!

About a year ago I was talking to my son about games. He asked me what my favorite board game was when I was growing up. Without hesitation I said “That’s easy. Stop Thief.”

“What is it,” the seven-year-old  asked.

“Well, it's this game where you had this electronic scanner thing that kind of looked like a phone. You would listen to clues like footsteps and breaking windows and try to figure out where the thief was in the city. Once you had enough clues you could arrest the bad guy. Sometimes they would get away from the cops and make a “nyah nyah nyah” sound and run like crazy. If you were lucky and we're paying attention to the sounds, you could figure out where they went. My brother and sister and I played it a lot. It was super fun.”

“Can we buy it?”

“No. They stopped making it about thirty years ago. I looked for it once on eBay but I would have had to buy two really expensive sets to make sure I had enough pieces to make up one good one.”

Fast forward many months to a little before Thanksgiving…

I called to let the wife know I was on my way home from work and I was skipping the gym that day. Normally this would be met with an “Ok” followed by a lively discussion about what foods neither of us were in the mood to have for dinner.  This time, though, the response  was a nearly exuberant “Sure! Ok! So you're coming straight home then?” followed by the not-so-subtle sound of a child trying to stop himself from giggling like crazy.

Something was up. “Okay. See you at home,” I said.

I got in the garage and I saw a note taped to door entering the house. I read (out loud as per the note’s instructions)  the oddly-metered poem describing a surprise and was permitted to put down my gear.  Right then, the boy snatched the note out of my hand and dashed off with a quick look behind that said “Chase me!”

Did I mention that they were both about to explode with excitement?  No?  Well, they were.

I gave chase and there he was at the chalkboard in my wife's office next to a note that said “LOOK DOWN”. A RedBox DVD was sitting there (“Meh…” I thought) alongside another poem.

Again the poem was read, and again it was snatched away, and again the boy ran off. I ran after him upstairs to the TV room and chased him behind the futon. There at my feet was the box you see in the upper left of this post.

“No… way…” I said. They both just beamed.

Earlier that day, apparently, they were at CHKD (a thrift store) dropping off some stuff. The wife was getting a tax receipt (cuz that totally, totally matters…) so the boy took the opportunity to browse. “Hey, mom,” he said. “Didn't dad say his favorite game when he was little was called Stop Thief?” 

“I don't know. I think so,” she said, distractedly.  After a bit of trying he was able to get her to turn around and he pointed to a black box with STOP THIEF emblazoned on it in big orange letters. The container looked like it was in good shape. Someone had scrawled the price on the cover in blue crayon. It was marked down to $10 from $20.

"Can we get it for dad?”  At ten bucks, there was little to lose, so she answered “Yes”.

They got it home and inventoried the contents - everything was clean and neat and seemed to be there with the exception of two cards.  Not too sure how they did that… I think the boy actually went through the process of comparing the pictures on the box art to the actual contents. Anyway, a quick check with a nine volt battery showed them the scanner at least turned on but, since they had absolutely no idea what bleeps and bloops to expect, they removed the battery and put everything back.

“Now, I think we should give this to Daddy for Christmas,” the wife said. “Do you think you can keep it a secret until then?”

“No,” he immediately returned, “No way.”

So they came up with the sweet, silly way of presenting it to me I told you about.

The “missing” cards do not detract from the gameplay whatsoever and everything is in great shape. The scanner was clean and looked new. The money wasn't even bent and the instruction manual looked nearly untouched.

Remember when electronics came with overly helpful instruction manuals?  Sigh. That ruled.  In typical 1979 fashion, the manual described every possible game operation in excruciatingly enjoyable detail. Any question you could come up with, the answer is there. Flipping through it is pretty much like getting a hug. In the meantime I type this on a device with a kajillion purposes, each and every one awesome and futuristic and infuriating and nearly-but-not-quite functional, and documented only by way of slightly-less-confused-than-you “experts” disagreeing with each other on a forum out there somewhere about exactly how easy it is to root your device to  install a series of non-vetted third-party apps that might allow you to do something as mind-blowingly complicated as “printing a damn document from the damn device I just wrote the damn thing on for crissakes”.

Well, that paragraph took an ugly turn… Get off my lawn!

Gameplay is exactly how I remember it. I was surprised and delighted at how quickly I fell into re-mastering the game.  The wife insists on using a notepad to write down possible locations of the thief. While she does this, the boy and I “patiently” wait for our turn to come around (read: sigh heavily, roll eyes).

Two months ago the boy stumbled on a ruthless solution to this game. I won't spoil it, but he takes advantage of an imbalance in gameplay that exists  when only two people are playing. His method involves giggling maniacally while bankrupting his opponent (me) as soon as he can, despite protests like “Dude! That's not cool.” and “Oh, come ON we’re supposed to be catching a thief, here!”

The game has since been played dozens of times and will forever occupy a place on my Shelf of Cherished Items at my writing desk.

Thanks again guys! You rule!