Game on! Or not...

I had good intentions. Really.

A nice wholesome family card game before dinner. Just a quick little game (the back of the box promised 15 minutes) while we waited for the water to boil for the pasta, and the garlic bread to bake.

Who knew it would all go so disastrously?

I guess the name of the game COULD have clued me in.

“You Gotta Be Kidding!”... which is eerily similar to one of Phil’s favorite exclamations… ‘You’ve GOT to be freaking kidding me!’ The source of which is usually a dead car battery, a broken pipe… or… um… lightning striking our house, rendering our computer, alarm system, garage door opener, sprinkler system and television KAPUT. That phrase has preceded a couple of insurance claims.

So… not good.

But this game? This family card game boasts on the back of the box… and I quote:

“’You Gotta Be Kidding!’ gets kids and grown-ups thinking, laughing, reasoning and having a blast making goofy decisions. Best of all, kids have fun speaking up for a change, instead of always saying ‘I don’t know.’ Watch imagination rule and confidence build as kids get comfortable standing up for their choice while laughing the whole time.”

Laughter? Reasoning?? Imagination? Confidence?? You had me at ‘Reasoning’, Mr. Copywriter.

It’s a game of ‘Would you rather…’ And then each player tries to guess what the reader would choose. The example on the box (maybe I relied too much on this box?) was pretty innocuous.

Would you rather… Eat a bucket of apple stems

OR

Eat twenty banana peels?

A little icky, perhaps. But still worth some thought, and a chuckle. All in good fun. Sooo the first question out of the box…

As a stuntman, would you rather jump off a cliff into water with a blindfold on…

OR

Jump from a cliff twice as high, but without the blindfold?
(Feel free to think about that one… )



And then… it got dicey. Question 2:

Would you rather always have a fly frozen into each of your ice cubes when you drink something cold?

OR

Drink out of an unwashed tuna can?


Ew.

And then?

Would you rather spread nose pickings over your cereal?

OR

Spread the skin from a bunch of popped blisters over your cereal?




You have GOT to be freaking kidding me! Who the heck comes up with this stuff?? Pre-pubescent boys?? At this point in the game, my appetite has quickly diminished, as each of my children shouts out, in turn, ‘Boogers!’ or ‘Blisters!’ And Phil? Well, he was no help. He just joked we could change the name of the game to ‘The Diet Game’.

And then it was Davis’s turn. The question he chose?




Would you rather drink a small cup of the liquid from a huge blister?

OR



Eat a salad covered with Bits of Scabs?



That did it. The spaghetti and salad that I’d made for dinner suddenly didn’t look all that tasty. And I considered writing to the Zobmondo game company to talk to them about complying with the ‘Truth in Advertising' laws.

I had good intentions. Really. Turns out that while the idea of a card game before dinner sounded good, in THEORY… it has since become a question of:

Would you rather your Mom be honest with you and actually admit that she has thrown out your new favorite card game?

OR

Just have her pretend that it accidentally got knocked off the counter into the trash can and covered with old issues of Southern Living magazine?

Whoa. Tough call.