We're On the Eve of Deduction

On Sunday, we went to the annual (heh, heh, can't really have it more than once a year) Christmas Eve family dinner at the home of my sister the ex-mayor's wife.

Sis has a lovely home, tastefully decorated.

Here's my view, sitting at the end of our usual table, looking toward the kitchen. I have hidden Friend's identity. You'd have that look on your fake face too, it you saw Hick coming up behind you.

Here's the view to my left, looking into a sitting room with a piano out of sight to the right. Part of the evening's entertainment was Babe playing the piano while everyone sang Christmas carols.

There on the left is the front door standing open. Not open for thieves and vermin to rush in, unobstructed. There's a glass door. But it was 60 degrees! So unseasonably warm here for Christmas. That dark area on the right is a half-bath on the little hall that leads to the kitchen.

On the sideboard is a raisin pie, made by the ex-mayor. Poor guy. Nobody ate it! There were too many other goodies. I don't like pie. And Hick doesn't like raisins. He had a piece of the Yule Log cake on that platter. I had a slice of coconut cake. More on the dessert tomorrow.

Anyhoo... we played a new game. It's like if Pictionary and Telephone had a little game baby. We had six people at our table, so everyone got a stack of six slips of paper. You write a phrase on the top paper, then pass your stack to the left. The next person looks at the phrase, puts that paper on the bottom of the stack, and draws a picture of the phrase. Then passes the stack to the left. That person looks at the picture, puts it on the bottom of the stack, and writes what they think the phrase is. This goes on until the stack gets back to you. At which point you show people around the table what your original phrase was, and how it was interpreted at each step, to see if you get a "correct" picture from the last person. As you may well suspect, you most certainly do not!

As Sis pointed out when she started the game: "This is JUST FOR FUN! Not for a prize!"

Good thing. Because you never would have been able to deduce what the phrase was from that final picture! Here's one example. It didn't help that Hick was to my right...

1) Sis started her stack with the phrase: "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth."

2) Hick read the phrase and drew a picture.

3) The picture I got from Hick was TERRIFYING! It looked like a badly-drawn version of THIS! Only with pockmarks and an open mouth. Once I got over the shock, I laughed so hard I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. But I couldn't show anybody that picture. Yet. I wrote what I thought it was: "Zombie Woman, Screaming."

4) On my left, the ex-mayor's sister-in-law read my guess, and drew a full body wrapped like a mummy, with a face that had long hair and what looked like a beard, but was an open mouth.

5) The ex-mayor's brother saw that picture, and wrote: "Old Man." How that was his take on a figure wrapped in toilet paper or mummy cloth, I'll never know. He's kind of like Hick. They might even march to the same drummer.

6) Ex-Mayor drew an old man with a walker.

I suppose, if we're quibbling, there's a chance that the old man with a walker was wanting his two front teeth for Christmas. But that's not a phrase I would ever have deduced from that picture.

We had a fun evening, and my ribs are recovering from laughing.