Have some fun today. Laugh and have a good time. Do something you enjoy with someone you care about. As poet William Blake observed: "Life delights in life."

Fun for me as a youngster was riding my bike to my friend Susi's house on Saturday for a marathon game of Monopoly.

As philosophical genius Benjamin Franklin once said, "Games lubricate the body and the mind."

On this day in 1933, everyone's favorite board game was created in the midst of the Great Depression by an unemployed Pennsylvania salesman named Charles Brace Darrow (1889–1967). Darrow was flooded with requests for the get-rich real estate game which Parker Brothers mass marketed in 1935.

Monopoly continues to be the world's best-selling board game, available in over 80 countries and 26 languages. How has one simple game come to mean so much? Former Parker Brothers President Edward P. Parker explained the gaming experience as: "clobbering your best friend without doing any damage."

"The whole concept of becoming rich and putting people out of business is very Donald Trump," explained Chris Byrne, TV's "Toy Guy." "I don't think Monopoly is going to go anywhere anytime soon."

So, roll the dice. With strategy and luck, take a ride on the Reading and don't go bankrupt. Who doesn't know the rules? Oh, and there's more...

Playing Monopoly as a child, then with your children, is almost a rite-of-passage. The face-to-face connection is a celebration of fun and the maker of memories.

"We sometimes forget the most interactive thing in the world is the interaction between parent and child." explained child development expert Joanne Oppenheim. "Knowing how to interact is the basis for success in school and life. Without that, they’re really just kids with stuff."

I'll trade you Pacific for Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues...