Terrible Games

While we were up in Duluth last weekend, my son and I invented a really terrible game called "RockWeiner". Essentially the rules of RockWeiner are that you whip a Lake Superior rock at your opponent's weiner, and then he whips a rock at your weiner. This continues for an indeterminate number of turns, until you realize that getting hit in the weiner with a rock will hurt and you find something potentially less painful to do. It may be the worst game ever invented.

With that in mind, I'd like to review a list of things I played as a kid that I hope my kids never get thrust into.

1.) Shoot the Moose- A really horrible game invented by my across the street neighbor. One of you was the moose, and ran around the backyard aimlessly, and the other person was the hunter and that person stood someplace using his finger as a gun and made gun noises with his mouth to simulate shooting a moose. It always became contentious because it was difficult to prove that your invisible bullets had actually hit the moose, or if they had merely ricocheted off the moose's hoof. Nobody ever won.

2.) Find the Fart- A stupid game that ignored the obvious fact that fart smells vanish quickly. The object of this game was to fart, play a little Nintendo for a while, and then go roam the house trying to find where the fart had floated off to, so periodically you'd see me and somebody else walking around the dining room sniffing the air. One time I actually thought I found the fart, but alas, it was only a cat doo-doo in the corner (Side note: I didn't pick up the doo-doo)

3.) Potion Making- An obvious precursor to the concept of Potions class in the Harry Potter series, this dumb game involved taking every single ingredient in the kitchen, mixing it into a bowl filled with Diet Coke, or Milk or something, sniffing it and recoiling in horror, and then leaving the bowl sitting on the counter because you thought of something better to do, so your mom would find it, sniff it, and recoil in horror 3 hours later. Cinnamon, worcestershire sauce, cardamom seeds, salt, mustard, toothpaste, vodka, evaporated milk, cooking wine, pee, dish soap, toaster leavings, liquid smoke, cat food, ranch dressing, Ken Davis BBQ sauce, vanilla, pickle brine, and a dead fly all mixed together makes for an interesting bouillabaisse.

4.) Drink a glass of Hot Water- Fairly self explanatory, pretty stupid.

5.) Play in a Sandbox Full of Poop- This game didn't really get invented, it happened more by circumstance, again over at my neighbor's house. I think my parents used to send me over there as punishment or something. But we were playing in the sandbox, and I remarked that it smelled really bad, and he replied, rather nonchalantly, "Oh, that's because there's cat poop and dog poop and raccoon poop in it," and then just kept playing in it. It was troubling.

6.) Trampoline Wrestlemania- This game was more dangerous than stupid. My friend had the only trampoline in the neighborhood back in the day, and although his parents had concocted numerous safety rules that were posted on the door by the trampoline, apparently pitching 9 year olds off head first into a snowbank or the sidewalk was perfectly fine. It was convenient that there was a 9 year old in the neighborhood who was OK with being thrown off the tramp onto his head, but still I don't want my kids doing that.

7.) Burn stuff on the Space Heater- A stupid idea to begin with, this game eventually devolved into "Pee on the Space Heater and See What Happens". What happens is that the odor of boiling hot urine is so strong you can't even go downstairs for 3 days and you have to throw away the space heater and your parents are really mad at you, so you try to blame the cat but it doesn't work.

8.) Toilet Baseball Cards- A poorly thought out way to kill the value of your 1987 Topps Baseball Card set. You would sit in the den and flip baseball cards towards the bathroom. If you curved them just perfectly they might even land right in the toilet which meant they never had to play again. It was like getting into the Hall of Fame. But actually making it into the bathroom was pretty good too, along with landing someplace weird like in someone's shoe, in the sink or the shower, or getting stuck in the baseboards. The really irritating part about this game was picking up all the cards afterward, so that rarely happened.

9.) Kill Darts- The object of this ill conceived game is to throw heavy, metal tipped darts from close range as hard as you can at your sister's dolls. If the dart hits the doll squarely in the forehead and sticks there, it's a kill dart. If you miss and poke a bunch of holes in your thinly sheetrocked bedroom, well that's pretty awesome too.

10.) The Old Lady Basketball Association (OLBA)- A remarkably dumb idea I invented using all the bad things I knew about old ladies, and a Nerf Hoop. The teams had names like "The Dehydrated Boobs", "The Raisin Pusses", and "The Soggy Depends", and most games somebody would die running down the court because they were so old, so each team always needed at least one sub because of all the frequent death involved. Other than that, it was just your ordinary 1 person playing alone competitive basketball game.

So yeah, I'm really, really hoping my kids find something better to do with their time, because otherwise they might end up like me, and that would be pretty stupid too.