In January of 2023 everything changed. My best fiends and I played monopoly, forever altering the course of our friendship. Maria Edirisinghe and Kara Tran and I played a seven hour game of monopoly during a sleepover that trailed into the early hours of the morning. Birds began to chirp, my mother was texting us to go to bed, and we could not stop laughing (and crying). Competitive, playing with Maria is horrible. She buys anything but nothing at the same time, and luckily obtains every card and rolls in her favor everytime. She dominated that game watching me and Kara tear each other apart.
The game ended around 3:00 a.m.. The neighborhood cats began to rise and the birds shuffled in the trees. Maria took me down by monopolizing the first whole side of the board with hotels. The embarrassment was very real as I owned the last entire strip of the monopoly board with hotels. The game changed our friendship, but mainly our group chat name which is “the monopolizers” with the money bag emoji. I would not replace that night for anything except maybe tickets for the Taylor Swift concert.