The Christmas-New Year’s break is always the most intense time
of the year. There are long hours with friends and family, intense
travel schedules, lots of opportunity for conflict and
argument.
Our family has always smoothed things over by resorting to the
dictionary.
Well, that’s where it started at least. More than a decade ago,
somebody came home with a game they called “Dictionary.” One player
chooses an obscure word out of Webster’s or the OED. Everyone else
makes up a fake definition. The chooser then slips them in with the
real definition and reads them all out loud. Each player then tries
to guess which is the correct meaning. If you guess right you get a
point. If someone else guesses your definition, you also get a
point. If nobody guesses right, the choosing player gets three
points.
We’ve often thought of awarding a point for the funniest
definition as well. My mother-in-law once defined a “jillet” as “a
pen pal with whom one exchanges mathematical equations.” Somebody
said that “kolo” was “an Australian version of polo in which the
players are mounted on ostriches.” “Dunkel” was defined, variously,
as “the formation of cows waiting to be milked” (that from a
15-year-old) or alternately “a person who can’t pass his driver’s
test.”
Even children can play. At age four, my youngest son contributed
such definitions as “the first man ever to ride in a car” and
“Abraham Lincoln’s friend.”
I once read that Mike Nichols and Elaine May were playing the
game at a party and Nichols became so convulsed with laughter over
one definition that he was unable to continue playing. The
definition he gagged over was “any statue of a chicken.” The
amazing thing is that it was the right definition.
As often happens, somebody finally took this informal game and
commercialized it. It’s called “Balderdash.” Inevitably somebody
gave it as a present and we adopted it. The game includes words
you’ll never find in any dictionary. Still, we couldn’t help
feeling a bit slothful spending $29.95 for something we could do
ourselves.
Then the manufacturers became inspired and created “Beyond
Balderdash.” This provides four new categories: “obscure
individuals,” “obscure dates,” “obscure acronyms,” and “obscure
movie plots.” Who, for example, was Bob Leach? He was “a man who
went over Niagara Falls in a barrel but later slipped on an orange
peel and died.” What does B.S.M.P. stand for? It’s the “Brussels
Sprouts Marketing Program.” What happened in April 29, 1913? The
zipper was invented. What was “The Devil Bat” about? It was “a
1940s horror film about a deranged doctor who trains his giant bat
to kill people who are wearing a certain shaving lotion.” (You
probably think I’m making that one up.)
“Beyond Balderdash” has kept us entertained for many years but
this Christmas somebody came up with another new game. It’s called
“Loaded Questions.” The principle is the same but it’s much more
personal.
The dealer picks a card that asks everyone a question. “What is
your most precious possession?” “What is one food you will not
eat?” “If you could drive three creatures to extinction, which ones
would they be?” (My teenage son answered “mosquitoes, domestic
dogs, and the people who invented palm pilots.”) The player sitting
next to the dealer reads them all aloud and the dealer tries to
guess who wrote what.
Besides being fun, the game is surprisingly revealing. When
asked “What historic individual would you like to pattern your life
after?” my wife chose “Jesus Christ,” my mother “Nancy Reagan,” my
father “Santa Claus.” When asked “What would you like your nickname
to be?” my mother-in-law responded “Honeybunch.” After 57 years of
marriage, my father-in-law has started calling her
“Honeybunch.”
So it goes. Taken in the long run, of course, all this is as
inconsequential as discarded 2003 calendars or the Christmas
wrappings left beneath the tree. But that’s what’s best about the
holidays. It’s a time when the world’s political melodramas can
fade briefly and things as inconsequential as the definition of
“tib” can become important. (It’s “the ace of trumps in the game of
gleek.”)
