Pictionary

I spent last night playing Pictionary with my boyfriend's parents. It seems like such a silly, innocuous game. Everyone draws badly and laughs at each other and occasionally comes up with something almost ridiculously clever. The more I think about it, the more fascinated I am by how a game manages to get people to spend hours sitting around a table all doing something they are really, really bad at.

In general, playing a game with someone can give you incredible insight into their personality. How do they handle setbacks? How do they handle setbacks caused by someone on their own team? On another team? Are they good or bad at losing? At winning? I've played games of all sorts with many kinds of people, and the correlation between "fun to play games with" and "quality human" is pretty high.

Most games played in America fall into two very broad categories. I'm talking "games found at Wal-Mart" not "games nerds play at scheduled Game Days that require comprehensive tracking of VPs and GPs". American games either work very hard to show you how stupid you are (Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, Scattergories, etc) or are almost utterly pointless (Sorry, Go Fish, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Uno, Skipbo, etc). There are a very few non-nerd games that have something more than that, and Pictionary is one.

In most areas of life, it is wholly unacceptable to do a poor job. Pictionary is almost more fun the worse job you do. We laughed until our faces hurt all night long. There was his mother misreading "BLIMP" as "BUMP". There were the words like "ANGEL" and "CHRISTMAS TREE" that were entirely based on who could draw the fastest. There were completely unfathomable things to draw like "DETROIT LIONS" (I didn't even know which sport they played) and "ELECTION" (his brother was planning to draw and ear for "sounds like" and then draw a guy with an, well, you get the point). There were moments of impressive connection between the couples as teams such as when his brother drew "MUTE", his mother drew "INCREASE", and I drew "EXPLODE". Then there were times when no one had any idea what was going on, like when I tried to draw "ICE CHEST" and failed spectacularly. The penguin means it's COLD, dang it!

The game was close the whole time, each team drawing ahead and falling behind in turn. In the end, his parents team and ours were on the last spot, and it was time for the final round. This was when "BLIMP" was drawn, and his mother sure did draw an impressive bump. My boyfriend shouted out everything he could think of, including "zepplin" (NERD) before he got around to "blimp", but we ended up taking the day. I tried to call for a re-do, but it was over. We were declared the victors.

Having a safe place to try things out and have nothing riding on the result is rare in our culture, so I suggest healthy and frequent doses of Pictionary and Cherades for all. If nothing else, as long as you're doing it right, the laughing is excellent exercise.