Out of the Mouths of Babes

We had a few people over to our house recently to eat and play games and generally act like a bunch of wild hooligans, and we succeeded! I haven't heard that much loud, raucous laughter in a while, and it was good medicine. One of the games we played was Catchphrase, which all of my readers have probably played at one time or another. Our guests who brought the game had the neat little electronic version while, unbeknownst to me, we had the boxed version upstairs in our game closet. Randy reminded me of its existence and next thing you know, the kids and I were playing the game obsessively over the next 3-4 days.

Playing a game like that with kids is at times eye-opening, thought-provoking and often riotously funny; after all, their frame of reference is often quite different from that of an adult. For example:

1. G-Force - If an adult were trying to get someone to guess this answer, I'm guessing the word "gravity" would appear somewhere in the clue. But how did Peyton get her partner to guess the right answer? Simple: "It's that movie that's coming out with guinea pigs in airplanes." Easy-peasy!

2. nightcap - Now granted, the clue Darcy gave for this word was absolutely dead on: "Some people wear these on their heads when they're sleeping." But something tells me the makers of Catchphrase were thinking of entry #1 in the dictionary when they included that answer in the game--wouldn't you agree??!

3. tattoo - This is my favorite, because it shows the innocence of my sweet little Peyton. When it was her turn to describe that word, here is how she helped us to visualize the answer: "Ooh, ooh, it's where you put this thing on your skin and then you get it wet and you peel back the paper . . . ." All of us screamed "Tattoo!" in unison, and then I absolutely burst out laughing. Who else but an innocent little kid would describe a tattoo in that way??!