Mai Mingle grew up in a family of modest means.
She was the child of an immigrant family from the early 20th century. Her parents had escaped famine and war, and they believed any expense beyond food and clothing was a waste of money. To them, wasting money was the greatest cardinal sin.
For the first ten years of her life, she never received a single Christmas gift. The first time she ever played a board game was in the fifth grade, when she visited a classmate's house and their parents brought one out.
Her classmate's house had a small cabinet filled with games Mai Mingle had never played: Scrabble, The Game of Life, Connect Four… and Monopoly.
How could she ever forget Monopoly? The game wasn't nearly as elaborate back in the fifties as it would later become. But the first time she placed her little wooden token on the square marked "Start," she felt she would remember that moment for the rest of her life.
And Mai Mingle did remember it for the rest of her life.
