* In playing Scattergories on Saturday nite after xmas dinner at Mr. W’s parents’ house, we played teams, 3 females against our 3 male counterparts. The electronic console selected the category the men are supposed to think of a word in: “Human Body Part.” The timer begins, the pressure is on, and the console randomly selects the letter that the first word must start with: “C.” There was a silence, and we looked around uncomfortably. The men: Mr. W, his brother, the brother’s daughter’s boyfriend. The women: me, the brother’s wife, their daughter. To our right: Mr. W’s and his brother’s father acting as spectator. Of course no one could think of anything else but the obvious slang female body part beginning with “C”. We just laughed. Mr. W finally struggled out, “Cornea!” “Ooh, good one,” everyone congratulated him for dodging that bullet. Same category, now beginning with the letter “A”. They got one pretty easily. Same category, the final letter. “P,” the ruthless electronic console demanded. Everyone gave up and laughed, and the two brothers turned to the boyfriend and delegated him with an, “Oh, just SAY IT!” “PENIS!” the boyfriend yelled, a bit too gleefully. I guess no one thought of “pupil.” I was afraid to look in Mr. W’s dad’s direction, but I was told he was laughing.
* In a trivia game, the question asked what comic strip cat a particular artist created. Mr. W’s sister-in-law, who was trying to answer the question, wasn’t sure which one to say. I said, “There’s only two, you’ve got a 50/50 chance. And they both look alike.” I knew she was stuck between Heathcliff and Garfield. She guessed Garfield and the answer was Heathcliff. The daughter’s boyfriend said, “Who’s Heathcliff?” His girlfriend said pompously, “Oh my God, you don’t know Heathcliff?! He’s this cat that goes around and has adventures with his cat friends…and he has this magical bag that he pulls random stuff out of…” Her boyfriend stared at her, and said, “That’s Felix.” “OH!” she said, and dissolved in a fit of hysterical laughter in which she had to avert her face and try to breathe, and she started heaving and crying. “Oh, great, there she goes,” her boyfriend said, who apparently has seen her like this before. He turned to me and said, “She’s useless to me now. You wanna be my partner?” She heaved and gasped and laughed and cried for probably almost 5 complete minutes before she recovered enough to the point where we could continue the game. I was relieved her eyeballs didn’t explode.
* Mr. W and I had parked outside his brother’s house on Sunday, getting ready to resume Game Night, Day 2. He first brought in the games we’d just purchased at the Aladdin, and was walking back out toward the car as I was walking from the car to the house. As we walked toward each other in the street, I had the sudden thought that I would, once I got close enough, explode into a run and pounce on him and scare him. I tried to remain patient, looking straight ahead, walking normally…or so I thought. He read something in my eyes or maybe in my body language, and what ended up happening was that we both burst into a run toward each other at the same time, which caused me to run into him a lot faster than I had estimated, and because he leapt, too, he cut my jump short, and I jammed my finger against his chest.
It took us about a minute to stop laughing and to stand up straight again.
* Mr. W and I were walking back to his place from having just watched Jennifer Aniston’s Rumor Has It at a local theatre last nite. I was in a goofy mood. The conversational topic led me to say jovially, “But guys DO appreciate me. They just do it after the relationship ends.” He played along and said something supportive. I continued, “Yeah, they don’t realize until after I’m gone that I’m better than other girls! I can run faster… AND I have a higher sex drive!” Mr. W said something jokingly that displayed his dubiousness, so I responded to his challenge with, “I’ll prove it RIGHT NOW!” and … you have to picture this happening precisely simultaneously… I crouched into starting position and tried to take off in a sprint but got yanked back after one step since we were holding hands and Mr. W was headed toward a shrub next to him, saying, “Right here? In this bush?”
Since we weren’t looking at each other when we each did our thing, he didn’t know why I was laughing and I couldn’t keep enough air in my lungs to explain that I was trying to prove the running part, not the sex drive part, when I was violently jerked back toward him. I was doubled over and laughing so hard that I almost spat out my spleen.
I had so much fun this weekend.