Belated Christmas Post--Hilarity

Way back at Christmas there existed a perfect night.  I mean perfect.  In every way.  I wanted to post about it but I forgot my notes (yes, I started taking notes halfway through the night so I could remember all the hysterically funny and witty things that were being said.  Yes, I am a historian, why do you ask?).

I finally got my notes but then I was busy with other things.

It is time for that night to be blogged about so that I can read about it when I'm 80 and have a good laugh.

To set the scene, Timothy and I, Wyatt and Lindsay Ann, Mom and Dad, Lindsay and Sterling, Ethan and two of Ethan's friends, Keegan and Josh, were sitting at Mom's kitchen table eating copious amounts of food including her gourmet homemade chocolates and candies, plus licorice (it is Dad's house after all), oranges, ice cream, etc.

We started off playing the Barney Game, otherwise known as the Name Game where everyone writes down a bunch of names of famous people (or horses--Secretariat and Pharlap show up in just about every game we play) and then you draw the names out of a bowl and try to get your team to guess the name.  Much like Taboo only with famous people and no forbidden words.  It's one of my favorites even though nobody will let me and Timothy be on the same team.  SO RUDE.  People are scared of our awesomeness, which is understandable.  Still, I love being on Timothy's team for this game.  We rock.

The first part of the game is everyone writing down names.  During that phase of the game there was all sorts of things going on.  For example:

Dad: "Tim, I've been really good the past two weeks.  I've been hoping to get lucky for Christmas."

Tim: "Sounds like you started early." 

Wyatt was . . . even more like Wyatt than normal that night.

Wyatt: "Andrea, juggling competition right now.  Right now!  Ooh--I win!!!"

Then Wyatt was throwing orange pieces into cups, much to Mom's annoyance.  When she tried to retaliate she accidentally threw paper into my milk.  Then Wyatt got up and gave Lindsay Ann a crazy back rub.

Lindsay Ann: "There's a reason it's only Christmas and birthdays."  

Then Wyatt and Lindsay Ann were throwing skewers.  We had the skewers out because we had shrimp and Lindsay Ann is really allergic so people were using the skewers to eat the shrimp so we could throw everything away that touched shrimp.  But Wyatt and Lindsay Ann thought the skewers were fun.

Wyatt, after piercing an orange with a skewer: "I killed that orange!" 

Dad: "He's definitely the hunter for the family."

Mom: "Wyatt!  If you throw one more of those things I'm going to throw you in the nose!"

Then Mom proceeded to beat on Wyatt while he whimpered and cowered and cried.

Sterling: "Some hunter."

Dad: "The cowardly hunter."

Wyatt: "I hunt oranges, not wild beasts!"

Tim: "You fall more into the 'gatherer' category."  

Once we actually started playing things got even more hysterical because poor Keegan had never played and we put in a lot of people/horses that were less well known to him.  The funniest part of the night was Keegan.  He drew a slip of paper out of the bowl and said:

Keegan: "Two body parts."

Tim: "Foot and arm!  Shoulder and head!"

Dad--dancing: "Head, shoulders, knees and toes."

They never did get the answer--in part due to laughing at dad's dancing rather than guessing.  Several turns later Lindsay Ann drew the same slip of paper (you put back in the ones you can't get):

Lindsay Ann: "Kami's car!"

Wyatt: "Pinky."

Andrea: "Pinky and the Brain!!"

Keegan: "That's the one I had when I said two body parts."

The game was paused for over five minutes while we laughed hysterically.  Two body parts for Pinky and the Brain.  It still kills me.

Also funny was when Mom pulled out a paper and said, "Lewis and a girl's name."

Dad: "Tim, come on, you put it in!"  (They were on the same team.)

Tim, chuckling, "I know, I can't remember what it is."

A little background for the next funny.  My parents got married when they were crazy young.  Much younger than what you're thinking when you think crazy young.  Obviously, my mom didn't have time to date very many people before hooking up with my dad.  But, when she was 13, there was a neighbor boy who gave her a get well card.  My dad still finds mention of this boy irksome.

Josh: "Like Mozart."

Lindsay Ann: "Wolfgang!"

Mom: "Jack!"  She thought he put in the name to bug her.

Dad laughing.

Andrea: "The boy who liked Mom."

Mom, defensively: "He was a good dancer."

Dad, waving his hand in front of his face like it suddenly became too warm, "Ooooohhhhh."

And lastly, Keegan: "Rhymes with Mumby."  

Ethan: "Gumby."

Dad: "Why didn't he just say the flexible guy??"

After the Barney game Ethan and his two friends left and Timothy broke out a poetry writing game called Cyrano.  It has very simple rules but basically you write a four line poem in AABB or ABAB form about a designated topic with required rhyming sounds.  Timothy kept trying to explain the game and, of course, nobody was listening.

Timothy: "Gastronomy means?"

Lindsay: "Write two words?"

Timothy: "Four lines."

Mom: "Tim, did you want to be a school teacher?"

Dad: "This is about the equivalent of a 7th grade class."

Wyatt: "I need to go to the bathroom."

Timothy: "I'm writing your name on the board."

What we learned, playing this game, is that Wyatt, Tim, Sterling, Dad, Lindsay Ann are all exceptional poets and I stink.  As in stinketty-stink-stink.  But the poems were so hilarious I could hardly breathe by the end of the game.

Wyatt's poem about gastronomy--the rhyming sounds were "ess" and "ive":

The food in the tummy of lil ol' Bess
Tasted real yummy, even the parts that fell on her dress.
The food that she ate was so heavenly scrumptious and wonderfully jive,
It made her feel like she was flittering, floating, and oh so alive!

Dad's poem about gastronomy:

There once was a man named Arness
Whose stomach was really a mess,
His home was truly a dive
Because he upchucked routinely at five.

Timothy's poem about gastronomy:

Mixing cream with finesse,
Each new dish he did caress.
Gaston the chef felt more alive
With every plate he could provide.

Sterling's poem about gastronomy:

Oh my bowels, that just don't jive
Methinks I'm lucky to be alive
When from within I feel the stress
Then from my mouth spews the mess.

Wyatt: "Methinks I wrote the poem about the bosom."  (Wyatt totally got attached to the word 'methinks' after Stirling used it.  It was hilarious.)

Dad's poem on lost loves:

My sadness affects my every gland
My tears they drop upon the sand,
If my love hadn't left me for a larket,
I would not be broken-hearted and back on the market.

Timothy: "What's a larket?"
Dad: "Who doesn't understand larket?  If you make up original words you get extra points."
Sterling: "My cheeks hurt."
Wyatt: "That should be the title of your poem."

Sterling on Forests:

I once was purousing through some muck
To try and avoid my chore
When suddenly from the forest came galloping a buck
and now my bum is so sore.

Timothy on Forests:

Wand'ring deep in ancient forests I sometimes can't ignore,
The overwhelming feeling that spreads deep into my core;
That which was left behind oft leaves me thunderstruck
When I glace down and discover my shoe is covered in some critter's muck.


Wyatt on Forests:

A man named Forest would have great luck
If he were to suddenly win a truck.
However, if while bravely home he began to snore
At the bottom of a gully both he and his winnings could be reduced to gore.

Andrea on Forests:

Forests of yore
are filled with lore
Of pluck
amidst the muck.

I think this is Lindsay Ann on Forests:

My horses tail had a burr
The witch in the forest had a cure
But I fell in the muck
And ran out of my luck.

Wyatt on Death:

Swallowed my gum
Took a tum.
Threw up red flecks
Death all problems corrects.

Andrea on Death (think So I Married an Axe Murderer):

Reject-ed
Deject-ed
Come-es Death
Rum pum pum.

Yeah--I pretty much stink at poetry.

It was such a fun night.  We stayed up until about 2:00 am and poems are WAY funnier that early in the morning.  I love it when my family gets together and everyone is in a good mood.  So . . . late at night and not early the next morning.  :)

Sorry to those poets who were left out because they didn't give me their poems and/or I couldn't read their handwriting.  At least some of the poems are preserved for posterity.

PS For those of you who know Jared, Megan's husband, we convinced him to play one round of Cyrano later during the Christmas break and he didn't even have to write anything to be hilarious--he just had to be himself.  Protesting how lame the game was and how he couldn't write poetry.  Kayli, Kami, I know you can imagine it.  Hee hee.