We Crashed Three Times Before Sky Team Taught Us to Work Together

The first time Hal and I played Sky Team, we crashed before we ever reached the runway. So did the second time. And the third. I want to be clear that nobody was upset about it. This was a Tuesday in May, the dishes were done, and my husband of 31 years was laughing at a board game instead of reaching for the television remote.

I had bought the game on a whim. It comes from Scorpion Masqué, the box says two players and ages 12 and up, and the idea is that you and your partner are pilot and co-pilot trying to land a plane together. The listing said the whole thing runs on communication, and I liked the sound of that. Hal is competitive at games and quiet about nearly everything else, and I thought a game where we were on the same side might suit him.

We play at the round oak table in the kitchen, after supper, around 7:30 once the dishes are up. I took the pilot seat because I was the one who opened the box. Inside there is a control panel, an airplane axis disc, eight dice, two player aid screens, and an altitude track, plus the pieces for the approach. It is a small box. It fits in the wicker basket on the sideboard with the rest of our games.

The first three landings were a mess. You have to clear the air traffic, get your speed down, keep the wings level, and put the plane on the runway in one piece, and we managed about one of those things at a time. Hal would say something he thought was perfectly plain, and it would land on my side of the table meaning the opposite. We did not argue. We just went down. Three times.

The fourth try we landed. Same evening. Hal sat back and said it was the most fun he had had in a while, and then he asked if we could go again. That was May.

We crashed three times in a row and not one of those crashes turned into a fuss between us. That had never happened at our table before.

How Our Fridays Actually Go

Six months in, we have flown about eight of the twenty airports in the box, each with its own layout and its own rules. We have not hurried. One airport took us three Fridays, and a fourth where we lost anyway and laughed about it. That is the pace of two people in their late fifties who are tired by nine o'clock and do not need to finish anything.

Scorpion Masqué also puts optional modules in the box, the kind that add trouble to a landing. There are things like kerosene leaks, ice on the tarmac, and a rookie intern who needs extra guidance. We have tried a couple of those on nights when the plain landing felt too easy, and we put them away again pretty quick. The standard version is enough for us.

Here is what this game has done that our others have not. Tuesday is Jaipur, and I love Jaipur, but Jaipur is a contest. Hal wins a little more than half the time, and on a bad night he goes very polite and quiet, which is how a man sulks when he would rather not admit he is sulking. There is none of that on Fridays. When we crash, we both crashed it. When we land, we both landed it. Neither of us owns the win.

It is not a deep-talk game, either. We do not learn anything about each other's childhoods while we bring a plane down through bad weather. What we learn is how the other one says something that matters while the clock is running, and after 31 years I will take that.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would not tell you a board game fixes a quiet house. It does not, and I am not a counselor and we never went to see one. What I would tell you is narrower and, for us, more useful. In September of last year our daughter moved out, and I noticed Hal and I were eating supper in front of the television without saying a word to each other. That is the whole problem I was trying to solve. Sky Team gave us a Friday night where we sit at the same table and pay attention to the same thing for about an hour, and it never once feels like a feelings exercise, which matters if your husband is built like mine. If your partner is the loud, competitive kind, hand them the pilot seat now and then and take the co-pilot side. If the two of you are brand new to each other, all the better, because you will find out fast how you talk when something is going wrong.