Updated MASH categories for a new generation

Mansion??? Ha! Yeah, right. House, even? Dream on. Look, it must be said: the categories of beloved elementary schoolyard game MASH are too unrealistic for today's world, even in a wild fantasy life scenario. They are out of control and must be stopped immediately.

You wouldn't dangle a hot pie in front of a kid and then go, "Ha ha! You'll never be able to have this!" Also, be careful dangling a pie. You will almost certainly destroy its delicate pastry-based structural integrity. Let's not even tell children that houses and mansions exist. Let's not even put that idea in their sweet little heads to begin with.

Property types aside, there are many other wildly outlandish and outdated MASH categories that simply no longer apply to children growing up in today's whacked society. Here's how the game should be played in 2018.

For starters, it's now called STAT: Shack, Tiny Home, Abandoned School Bus, Tent.

Step 1: Real estate

Write "STAT" across the top of the page. Shack, Tiny Home, Abandoned School Bus, Tent. Ah, much better.

Step 2: Love

We used to say, "Choose five people you want to marry." Uh, no. Way too old-school. Here's what we put instead now: Choose five people with whom you'd like to enter into a long-term, on-again, off-again hookup situation.

Step 3: Work

We used to say, "Choose five careers." Ha! On what planet do young people have any kind of job security with a pension and benefits?! As you may have observed, work is no longer a career so much as a hastily cobbled-together collection of random opportunities that may or may not stimulate you but at least prevent you from living in a fridge box under a highway. Here's the new question: Choose five part-time, unpaid freelance internship gigs.

Step 4: Kids

We used to ask "How many kids do you want?" Uh, that's hardly relevant in today's world. The question we ask in STAT is: How many kids can you reasonably afford to have given your precarious employment and the very real ways in which overpopulation is destroying the planet? HINT: If you write down any number over "1" you need to pick up a newspaper, buddy.

Step 5: Car

We used to ask "What kind of car do you want to own?" That's hilarious. Remember we used to write "Porsche" as though regular people would ever get within 50 kilometres of a dealership? No. Stop this foolishness. Welcome to the sharing economy, people. You have two options for this category: What kind of car-share membership would you like to sign up for, OR how much money do you want to autoload onto your transit pass each month?

From here on out, STAT works exactly like MASH: draw a spiral and get the other person to yell "STOP!" when he or she wants. Count the rings in the spiral, and use that number to start eliminating entries in each category.

A final note: in the '80s and '90s, we used to sneak a "bad" option into each category. That was fun! We used to put "Broken down golf cart" into the Car category, or "412 kids!!" into the Kids category. When it comes to STAT, there's no need to do that. The bleakness of each category is surely punishment enough. Have the best time!

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