When the cat's away...

Charades is a funny game. I believe that, in many ways, it's like playing Jeopardy! at home vs. actually being on the show. When the other team goes, you see things so clearly. Sun... dance... kid... Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid!, but when it's your turn, you don't know why your teammate keeps strapping something over his shoulder, pointing at you, touching his ear (you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear!).

So The Honey and I had a delicious dinner with The Friends number one (being there are two sets of The Friends that we hang out with) and started a game of charades. Couple vs. couple. We lost. So then, we decided to play girls vs. boys. The Honey remarks that it may be unfair to pit two people who have known each other for ten years against two people who have not even known each other a full year. And for a while he was right.

The game was 2-1, them. I pulled one I thought would be easy. The category was Words of Wisdom. The proverb was When The Cat's Away, The Mice Will Play. Their cat, Charlie, was in the room, so that was easy. She started saying things with cat in it, but none of them proverbs. I pantomimed "going away". I knelt on the floor and had my fingers scamper across the hardwood. I stood up and danced. She called out any and everything but proverbs. "Cat!" she said. I waved goodbye. "Cat in the hat! Cat waving! Cats!... Cats going into the computer room! Cats... get out of here!" I pantomime mice. "Crawling on the floor! Cats playing on the floor! Cat scratch the floor! Cat scratch fever!" I dance. "Cat's dance! Lord of the Dance! Do a little dance!" At this point, I break the rules a bit to remind her that the category is words of wisdom. The boys painfully allow this. I wave and leave. She gets up to follow me "away". I get back on the floor. I do the mice, I dance, time is running out, I get back down to do the mice. She yells, "Somebody dances like cat's feet!" and I laugh so hard, because, really, what kind of words of wisdom is that. She eventually got mice, but not the entire proverb before our time was up.

Another time, we are tied 2-2 and it's our time. I'm up. It's a song: The Hokey Pokey. I figure that I would just do the Hokey Pokey. She guessed everything but Hokey Pokey and finally, 30 seconds in, as she's watching me and trying to figure it out, her husband says, "It's the hokey pokey" with such exasperation that I laugh in the middle of turn yourself about. Everytime I remember how he said it, I laugh. "The Hokey Pokey isn't a song." she says. We all start to sing. "Well, remember, I went to religious school. We didn't sing the Hokey Pokey." What's so funny is that she almost always knew what the other team's charade was, except for the Jeremiah Was A Bullfrog one which involved the other guy stabbing my husband with his imaginary bull horns and some tongue flicking - and noone got that one. In the end, the two people who knew each other the least won. It was very satisfying.