The Making of Barren Wuffet
By Jack Archer
“I thought we were letting him win at first. He’s like three. I don’t think he even knows what money is.”
Since the onset of stay-at-home regulations, proud dad Benjamin “Graham” Wuffet (whose nickname stems from his affinity to a particular snack) began allowing his toddler Barren to play Monopoly with the family on game nights to have a four-person game.
“When you play with three people, someone always ends up with two of the railway stations,” G. Wuffet said. “It’s normally not me, and I end up wanting to murder whoever’s getting 50 bucks every time I land on the stinking train station.”
B. Wuffet’s father took a few deep breaths to calm himself and went on. “So I plopped the little guy in his booster seat and gave him the shoe piece because everyone hates that one.”
At first, the little tyke was only interested in chewing on the pieces and trying to crumple Monopoly dollars in his tiny fists. “It was pretty cute,” Elon “Musk” Wuffet, Barren’s pubescent older brother (with a bit of a B.O. problem), said. “I put it on YouTube, and the video’s somewhere around half a million views, but I think that’s partly because everyone’s so bored nowadays.”
The Wuffet family were sympathetic to B. Wuffet’s loose grasp of money, board games and life in general, so he received plenty of free property, loans and spare pieces to chew on. Because of this, when the rest of the family found themselves bankrupt at the end of the game one night, they chalked it up to unnecessary kindness. “Barren had been playing with us for a few weeks, and somehow he won,” Sheryl “Sandberg” Wuffet (she loves beaches), B. Wuffet’s mother, said. “We thought we’d given him too much free stuff, and the little goblin just got lucky.”
The family soon realised this was not the case. Barren began winning by ever-growing margins, improving with each game of Monopoly. Night after night, he drove the other members of his family into mortgage, debt and eventual bankruptcy. “I started to dread family game time,” M. Wuffet said. “One night, Barren earned so much money he used the entire bank to store it instead of tucking the bills under the board like a normal person.”
“HE NEGOTIATED HIS WAY INTO BUYING ALL FOUR TRAIN STATIONS!” G. Wuffet said, his lower lip trembling. “ALL FOUR! The whole time he was gurgling in his cute baby way. He just watched. Watched! Watched and gurgled as I paid 200 him bucks a station.” At this point, Graham broke down into tears and refused to continue his interview.
Barren started wearing a three-piece suit when they played. “I have no idea where he got the money,” S. Wuffet said, “or, for that matter, what kind of tailor was able to cut it down to that size.”
One night, Barren and his suit failed to show up to game time. “At first, we were relieved,” M. Wuffet said. “Then Dad turned on the TV, and we realized where Barren had gone.”
That night, The David Rubenstein Show had a special guest, who came on set with a diaper and a pacifier, as a well as a long stick he could use to point at tall things. “When we saw Barren on TV, making baby noises and pointing at numbers, we couldn’t believe our eyes, but we found that we weren’t completely surprised,” S. Wuffet said. “We watched with rapt attention, just like millions of other families.” Sure enough, all the numbers Barren pointed to turned green and doubled the next day, and all the ones he burped at flushed a deep shade of red the next time the stock market opened.
Barren Wuffet probably lives somewhere on Wall Street now. He toddles around and invests in things and somehow makes money. If you’ve got any brains, drop him a note and ask him where to put your life’s savings, and do whatever he tells you to, no matter how much his weally cute baby voiwce makes you doubt his credibility. That gremlin will get you set for life. I wish I got into Monopoly as early as he did.
