Fun and Games

Question: What's more fun than a post full of Teddy bears?

Answer: Absolutely nothing.

It's true! When I started this post, I thought, "How am I supposed to top Terry's adorable Teddy bears?" They are scrumptious, and I want one! But that is either here nor there. The matter at hand is following those Teddy bears with something fun to keep the happy going. It just so happens, I have some things in mind.

Let's talk about parties for a minute (Even Teddy bears have tea parties, don't they? lol). Somewhere in the world right now, there's a party going on. There's a party, or celebration, going on all the time, hence the phrase in the 1980-something classic Eddie Murphy tune Party All the Time.


The cyber world is no different, and this week the blogger Barbara Vey is hosting a virtual blog anniversary party at Beyond Her Book. Every day of the week will showcase different genres or different groups in publishing, and everyone is welcome to stop by, check out the goings on, and leave a comment. You might even win a prize! I know some of us book lovers from Fierce Romance will be bopping in and out throughout the week, so why not join us there?

I like parties. I like dancing and music and fun and friends. However, sometimes a party is just good conversation with friends or playing games all evening. As I thought about it, I never realized how much just hanging out and playing board games or cards played a role in my life, and still does.

In the old days (circa 1980), the Internet didn't exist as it does now. Families who now spend quality time IMing each other used to spend much of that time playing Scrabble, Monopoly, Clue, Boggle, Checkers, Twister, Life, Chess or card games such as Crazy Eight and Authors. My family and I used to play board games quite a bit, and thinking back, I believe you can learn much about other people when you play games with them. Leisure time activity is important to humans, and board games and cards allow time for quality conversation and fun.

What do you remember about playing games with your family and/or friends? Here are just a few of my memories (names have been changed to protect the innocent, of course):

Scrabble: I'm a Scrabble fiend. We always enjoyed a good game of Scrabble at our house; however, there was one drawback. After purchase, we immediately somehow lost the "k" tile, so we were and are still never going to be able to spell words "snake" or "cake" or "lake." I blame my inability to accurately identify shitaki mushrooms on this.
Clue: I loved this game! I like playing detective, but even more so because I thought Colonel Mustard was awfully cute. Often, my game mates would find me in the conservatory making beautiful music with him, if you know what I mean, even though, technically, he could have done it in the kitchen with the lead pipe. I guess you could say I always believed in someone being considered innocent until proven guilty.

Monopoly: Let me just say that this is not one of those games you use for a drinking game. Too slow and too unpredictable for budding capitalists like me who, to put it mildly, had no business sense at all at the time. I sucked at Monopoly. I'd always end up broke and sober. Why? I never could land on St. Charles Place, and my friends knew this. Every game they selected it as the place you had to land to get a drink, and every game I, like Charlie Brown certain Lucy wouldn't pull the football away, fell for it. I'd be rolling the dice like a madwoman praying for the needed random number to get me there, certain the Monopoly gods would eventually smile on me, and my friends would be vomiting schnapps on their fake money or sticking the little hotels up their noses and blowing them across the room in a quasi-Olympic event of the nasal variety. I think it turned out for the best, though, in that I actually finished college. Not sure what happened to the others after they dropped out one by one, but I'm guessing none of them can look at a Holiday Inn without feeling a sense of deja vu and a tingle in the nostril region.

Authors: I loved this game, too. Although I'd never heard of Robert Louis Stevenson or Sir Walter Scott, nor any of their books, I learned about all of them from playing this game so much. I'm bringing a deck to the Beyond Her Books party for a strip Authors tournament. Who says classic literature can't be fun?

Twister: A great game and terrific for keeping physically active, even in this day and age of the Wii. A warning for those who plan to use it as an adult party game, though. For God's sake, if you're playing it naked, don't use baby oil, and don't ever play near a fireplace or a stable. Learn from my bitter experience.

Life: We didn't play this much...too much like the real thing, although I did like the little people and cars. However, it was a bummer to have to keep saying, "Yeah, I lost at Life." How many poor children did this damage at a young age? Can the average person's success in his/her later years be traced back to success or failure at this one game? There's a story premise for you!

Husker Doo: I may have spelled this wrong, but I can't remember anything about it except how the name sounded (hoooooosker doo) and that it was imported from Europe, like from Sweden or somewhere where it was very popular. Basically, it traveled across the ocean to much hype, only for millions of Americans to discover it was the board version of Go Fish. Still, I owe my life-long love of art to the pretty little pictures on the game board.

Crazy Eight: I don't know how many games of this my mother and I played together. We'd use it as an excuse to sit and talk about life and girl stuff, and I think that was her intention all along. "You want to go on birth control? Oh, well...how about a game of Crazy Eight?" Moms are smart that way. :)

What about you? Do you have a favorite game? If so, come check out the Beyond Her Books party this week. We might be playing it, or dancing, or just having fun. Come join in!

Happy Reading!