It’s fun to pepper my life with games. I am forever thinking of brain games or other games to spice up the mundane. I like to create a game within a game whenever I can. I like to think that it encourages mental sharpness, or maybe it just keeps me on my toes.
Here are examples of what I mean.
When our kids were young, I introduced the License Plate Game. If you don’t know, it’s a game where you look at license plates on cars on the road, and check off all the states that you see. Before summer vacations started, I would print off a nice little page listing the names of all 50 US states. As we spotted cars on the road, we would look at the license plates and mark the states on our list. Standard family car game.
After a few attempts at the License Plate Game, it became clear that the kids were not into it. I seemed to be the only one noticing and calling out licenses. Look! Someone from North Dakota! That’s a long way off! I couldn’t convince my kids to care. But, I thought it was really cool that someone from North Dakota was driving around in Georgia, so I cared. And, when I saw a car with a tag from Hawaii….step back, people, things were getting serious! My family wasn’t going to spoil my party. So, for the last unknown number of years, I have conducted my personal License Plate Game each summer. My rules are simple—In late Spring, I print the list of states on heavy cardstock and keep it in my car. Starting on the last day of school, in late May around Memorial Day, the game begins. It ends on Labor Day in September. Game on! Numerous times, I have collected all 50 states over the summer—that’s an accomplishment! And my family? They mutter things like “There she goes again. Is she still doing that?”
When my sister and I were in college, we got summer jobs at a local egg processing plant. It was boring, repetitive, assembly line work. It was also the first time I had worked an 8-hour shift. Most days, our jobs required us to stand at the end of the conveyer belt, ‘catch’ the filled egg cartons before they fell off the ramp, and load them into crates or boxes. To spice things up, my sister and I would mess with each other. One trick was to sneak an empty egg carton onto the belt. The rhythm of lifting egg cartons, left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand, was busted when an empty carton got into the mix, causing the person to lose balance and swing her arm way up into the air. We also spent hours trying to think of The Most Beatles Songs, or As Many Countries As You Can Name, or An Animal For Every Letter of the Alphabet, or any number of mental games, to keep us from being bored while we did the manual labor.
Once, when I was working in an office, during breaktime someone discovered a stopwatch. While I can’t claim I came up with the idea, I happily joined into the game where we took turns pressing START then quickly pressing STOP on the stopwatch to see whose reaction time was the fastest; that is, who got the lowest elapsed time. We took turn after turn trying to beat one another’s score. I love that stuff--taking things around you and using them in a fun, interesting way.
Recently, I did a spur-of-the-moment game that really cracked me up. Let me set the scene. It was Free Ice Cream Cone Day at our local Dairy Queen. I tried to drum up some takers at home, but for some reason, nobody was interested in going to get some. People, I mean, it’s ICE CREAM, and it’s FREE, and it’s I.C.E.C.R.E.A.M.!!! What a bunch of duds. I wasn’t going to let them dampen my spirit, so I decided to drive myself right over to Dairy Queen for my own free ice cream cone. (OK, so, Dairy Queen doesn’t actually serve ice cream, per se; they serve frozen vanilla soft-serve swirl, which does not contain enough milkfat to legally be called ice cream by FDA regulations; but, that’s beside the point.) I drove to Dairy Queen. Immediately upon arriving in the parking lot, I felt out of place. All around the building, there were groups of people happily enjoying ice cream. Families with small kids, older couples, groups of teenagers. Big smiles and laughing faces, all enjoying their delicious ice cream cones together. I could see the cars in the drive-thru line in front of me with multiple heads bobbing about. Here I am all by myself. My family stinks. Feeling sorry for myself, I debated pulling out of the line and driving home. But, I want ice cream! Then I thought of something: I decided to turn it into a game.
I have a friend at work who is from the UK. During school, I talk with her every day. As I sat in the ice cream line, I wondered if I could mimic her British accent when I ordered my ice cream cone. Could I pull it off? I didn’t know. I quickly started practicing the phrases. Can I please have the free vanilla cone? That’s all. Thank you. I spoke out loud and rehearsed over and over to get the perfect intonation. When I pulled up to the speaker, I took a deep breath and then carefully enunciated. The drive-thru attendant’s voice spoke back to me as if nothing unusual was happening. Success! I quickly started practicing the words I would need to say when I pulled up to the next window, where I would face a live person. Hello. Yes. No. Thank you. That’s all. Okay.
Full of confidence, I drove up for my turn. The window attendant started to engage me in conversation, but as soon as I said "Hello" in my fake British accent, he lit up and yelled “Hey guys, look! It’s the British lady!” Other workers ran to the drive-thru window and leaned over to look at me. I smiled really big and shrugged my shoulders. Then, he said “We remember you from last summer!” Confused, I said "Oh?" But I kept smiling, bigger and bigger. He continued to talk about me as I nodded, and then he handed me my ice cream cone. When he said “Thanks for coming by! I hope you'll come again!”, I waved and called out “Cheerio!” as I drove away. Then I started laughing hysterically. I don’t know why the workers over-reacted to my speech—there are people with British accents and tons of other accents all over our city. I don’t go a day without hearing an accent from transplanted people. There was nothing at all unusual about a British accent in the Dairy Queen drive-thru line. But, for whatever reason, the Dairy Queen crew ‘remembered’ me from before. Go figure. That was, by far, the best ice cream run I had ever made.
I think the key to incorporating games into my life is to try to make things more interesting. Why just do this, if you could do it with flair? That’s why I sometimes play the ABC game by myself in the car, starting with the letter A, looking for something for every letter of the alphabet in order: there's an Airplane, there's a Bush, there's a Cow.... Or, sometimes, I'll play the Last Name First Name game, naming a famous person, and then another person whose first name starts with the last letter of their name: Brad Pitt--Thomas Edison--Nelson Mandela--Anderson Cooper... Anything to get me out of the doldrums of routine behavior. Whatever game I start, I design the rules to see if I can beat a certain time or come up with more answers than I did before or improve my score. There’s always a bit of competition thrown in.
I try to stay sharp and think outside the box. When things feel ordinary or humdrum, I try to keep myself interested by playing mental games. Sometimes I spice things up in ways that are quite silly. But, they are never boring. Let the Games Begin!
You are a kindred spirit.
Glad to hear it! Keep things interesting!!