UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

NEW SPECIMENS OLD SPECIMENS THE SCIENTIST MY LOG CONTACT ME
02/26/2007 - 8:18 p.m.

SCHOOLED

I love it when whippersnappers make assumptions about the old folk. I especially love it when those whippersnappers are wrong. The college crowd just couldn't wait for us to play "Cranium" with them. They thought they would beat us easily. No way, guys, no way.

"Cranium" is a trivia game, sort of. Cranium is a mix of word game, sculpting, drawing, charades, and humming. You play in partners. For the more artistic challenges, one partner has to convey a concept to the other by acting it out, by speaking it out (without the actual word), by sculpting it, by humming it, or by drawing it. The trivia and word games are more about the team agreeing on an answer. I was prepared to partner with anyone (because I am such a game slut) but the kids wanted FogieKnight and I to be a team.

I don't know what it is about youth that fails to appreciate the communication skills that can develop in a long-term marriage. Kat should have known but apparently she took a mental walkabout---or, more likely, she did not really care. That marital communication can even overcome the middle-age tendency to know exactly what the word you need is without being able to retrieve the exact word. They heard me rummaging around in my mental junk drawer a few times but I knew what I was looking for. Yes�..she came and she gave�.Barry Manilow sang it�it was a girl�..it started with an M�.oh, yes! Mandy! The fact that I was being timed made it a bit worse but I usually could start the motor running fast enough.

It also helped that many of the music questions skewed old. Barry Manilow? That's my era, I'm ashamed to admit. (Actually, I'm not ashamed of my age. I'm ashamed of the taste of my era.) FogieKnight, who insisted on being the hummer, not the hummee, for almost every round, knew all of the songs. Not all of the kids did. I was never up on contemporary music but I knew almost all of the songs. Most of all, it helped that a LOT of music questions came up. (As for sculpting, well, suffice it to say that marital communication was not enough to help me identify a cork. I swear that the blue clay thing that FogieKnight was enthusiastically ramming into whatever that was looked a whole lot more pornographic. I never knew it before but pornography, even abstract pornography, is very distracting.)

But still, get the old fogeys turned into something else altogether. It's okay though because I am old enough not to gloat.

Or not. Hey, guys. Schooled!

(Although I had a very good time playing with you--with Jenga which I could not win. Thanks.)

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