Game of Life: Paris Airport Edition

How to win? Do not miss your flight out of Paris while earning maximum points for roadblocks conquered and arriving at the gates as late as possible before they are closed.

Step 1: Plan to get to the airport 1.5 hours before departure because you’re flying within the EU and you paid a bit extra for the “fast security” lane.

Step 2: Order an Uber about 10 minutes before you have to leave. As you are ordering the Uber, realize that you are going to a totally different airport than you thought. This other airport is 20 minutes further away.

Step 3: Get stuck in horrid “no reason at all” Paris traffic and lose another 20 minutes.

Step 4. Lose 25 minutes to an ass-backwards automated baggage drop-off line because you are flying a budget airline and you failed to put the “most heavy” bag on the bag conveyor belt first. Skip GO and move to the non-automated baggage drop-off window line to repeat the process.

Step 5. Gain 10 minutes as you run like crazy (around the whole check-in space) to the “fast security” lane, and giggle happily about cutting past all the other losers in the other line!

GO TO PRISON: Lose 20 minutes at the security gate because you forgot you have a device (a kindle) in your personal bag and now they need to swab it - after first swabbing the bags of 10 other dummies just like you.

Step 6. Watch your wife and child abandon you run toward the gates with their tickets through the duty-free shops (because of course the gates are past all that); if you’ve been nice, they might try to get the plane to wait for you.

Step 7. Sprint for the gates yourself to find that the plane is not at the gate. It’s actually a bus ride away at the end of the open tarmac.

Finish. Dissolve in a surge of relief as you realize your wife and child did wait for you, and a third of the other passengers are also waiting there with them - because you are flying a budget airline and they are running 20 minutes late…