In my house, Friday nights are Family Game Nights. It might sound very Brady Bunch – one big happy G-rated family gathered around the kitchen table enjoying amicable quality time. I assure you – Game Night is brutal.
I’ve written before about my highly competitive spirit. Let’s just say that the apples don’t fall far from the tree. My husband, my two boys, and even my niece are all exceptionally competitive.
Our favorite go-to games are Yahtzee and UNO. We drop our real names on Game Nights, referring to each other by our card shark names: Foggy (my husband Dale, named in honor of Foghorn Leghorn), Richard (my eldest, Denver), Curtis (my youngest son, Timothy) and Veggie, my niece, Willow, who is a vegetarian. I am simply Mama.
We tease, cajole, badger, ridicule and lovingly pick on each other as the game progresses. Eyebrows get raised, eye daggers get thrown, and the competitive smack talkin’ gets more and more intense as the night goes on. It’s brutal. And it’s tons of fun.
I recently discovered another game that we just might have to incorporate into Game Night. It’s called Pie Face. Have you heard of it? A video of Scottish man playing the game with his grandson went viral, and the game became the hottest selling gift of the 2015 Christmas season. It’s a Russian Roulette-style game where at any moment, you might wind up with a face full of whipped cream.
No one can explain why a pie in the face is so funny, but it is. Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Looney Tunes, and even The Joker have used this form of slapstick comedy to great effect. (A little superhero trivia from this Superhero of Shipping: in one of the Batman comic books, The Joker concocted an elaborate scheme with the end goal of hitting Batman in the face with a pie!)
I can see the scene around our kitchen table now. And, I’m sure we’ll be laughing just as hard as this Scottish granddad. I’m reminded of the ancient proverb: “It’s all fun and games until someone gets a pie in the face; then, it’s freakin’ hilarious!”
Happy Monday,
~Mary
