A Brief-ish History of Spoons

Understanding this...



...is going to take a little explanation. Hang on. I'll try to be quick.

One of my memories of childhood, was playing the game "Spoons" with my friend, Ella, and her father. For those of you who do not know, it is a card game, the object of which is to get four of a kind in your hand. Once you get four of kind, you take a spoon from the center of the playing area. After that the rest of the players fight for the remaining spoons, and the player left without one gets a letter. I think Ella's family spelled s-p-o-o-n-s. Anyway, once you have all the letters you are out. Yes, I know. What can I say? I'm from Wyoming. We have a lot of good games there as my friends will attest.

Back to Spoons. My memory suggests that I was not good at this game initially. I was so busy looking at my cards that I never noticed that the others had quietly taken the spoons. I'm not sure how long I continued to play alone, but I remember they thought it was very funny.

My next memory of Spoons is that my mother, a lover of games herself, made things interesting. She said that in her family they spelled the word donkey, and then the loser had to go outside in the front yard and hee-haw like a donkey. Again: Yes, I know. Remember, Cowley had a population of 455 people. We had to be creative. But the addition of public humiliation made the game ever so much more intense.

So fast forward a few years. Some 20-something friends, living in California, are sitting around with nothing to do. "Hey! I've got a game I could teach you." And we laughed like twelve year olds when someone had to go out in the parking lot of our condos and bray like a donkey.

It became something of a tradition at our get togethers, but being somewhat creative, it didn't take us long to take things up a notch. Braying turned into doing a dance on the busy corner of Barranca and Alton, but then we realized the options of humiliation were wide open. After that, the best part of the game became determining the punishment before the game even starts. It just makes us giggle. Oh, and we've had some good ones!

My personal favorite occurred on a camp trip when Shilo had to report that she had seen Bigfoot at the local grocery. The sixteen-year old clerk did not know what to make of her. Some of my other favorites: wearing two different shoes to church, lying on someone else's towel at the beach until they ask you to move, asking a stranger to rub suntan lotion on your back, playing Dance Dance Revolution in the lobby of the movie theater wearing wrist and headbands, wearing the popup fire engine tent and a fireman's hat while running the four corners of the intersection making siren noises...the list goes on and on.

But now that we're nearing forty, things have slowed down somewhat it seems.

"So are we never going to play Spoons again?" Shilo asked last Sunday night. "I mean is that just a bygone era?"

It has been a while. I take some responsibility for that. Ever since I refinished my dining room table I have put a stop to Spoons-playing there. Long gashes have been known to occur after all, but we were at Shilo's house where her table is protected by a glass top. Let the games begin!

Here's the result:

Kimball lost.


He had to wear a pirate patch to the movie...


And order the concessions using pirate phrases (as in "Would you like to see my booty?)...


And everyone enjoyed the show!