This weekend was a game night at my house again and one of the games happened to be Taboo. For the uninitiated, Taboo is just like Dumb Charades, the only difference being that unlike dumb charades here you can actually speak to describe the word that your team has to guess, but cant use specific obvious taboo words related to that word. For e.g. if the word is fish, while describing the word you can say anything that you want except for the words from this taboo list - water, animal, eat, sushi, seafood. I am sure you get the drift. Also, it works in one minute time slot for each turn. You get 1 point for each word that you get right during that one minute and minus 2 points if you don’t get the word, or you use any of the taboo words. So you see, speed is important…and so is caution of not using the taboo words. And sometimes in the quest to perfect these two (speed & caution), we get to see situations like the one mentioned below.
During one of my team turns, this one guy was trying to describe one word.
Him - “What I like”.
Me - “Pizza?”
He shook his head and said - "No"
Me – “Alcohol? Partying?”
Shook his head again
Me – “Women?”
Some more head shaking followed….
… and we couldn’t think of anything more to fit in that description. We gave up and got a minus two on that one.
After the turn finished , when he came and sat next to me I asked him –“Dude, what was the damn word?”
He responded, with a long face – “Potato”
And the following words came out of my mouth as if they were meant to be the most natural response –“Really? Potato?? Duhh… you should have said What you look like rather than what you like” (If you havent guessed it already... the guy is big. Tall and bulky.)
He gave me a nasty look and then, the sweet pal that he is, he gave me company along with others in laughing it out.
After a few rounds, another one of my team members went up to take on the turn. By this time the other team was winning by a wide margin (Really, it wasn’t very unexpected given our team had people with the aforementioned articulation skills!! Sigh…Even the great guessing powers of other team members like myself couldn’t save us!) . Anyway this time we got as much as 4 words right and were on the 5th one (You see, usually in one minute time on an average, you can get 3-4 words right, 6-7 if you are good and about 9-10 if you & your team are incredibly great at it!) So crossing the average by getting onto the 5th one obviously translated into the excitement running high in the team. All of us had by now left our respective seats and in an attempt to stand close to the guy performing on the center stage, ended up standing very close to each other as well.
So the performer picked up this 5th card, his eyes lit up and we reckoned it was going to be an easy one. He said, pointing in my direction – “What she looks like”…and I tried to decide (silently of course, in my head!) between konkana sen, madhu (yeah that forgotten actress), a school teacher (people label me that sometimes…though more for my rare but tough reprimanding acts than my looks)…and some more unmentionable resemblances that i am charged guilty of, by various people....
....yeah so while i was busy deciding which ones of these would embarrass me the least, all my team shouted in unison …. (take a guess….) – “POTATO!”
WTF!!!
At this point I would like to mention that all this(my mental calculations & my teams luck with deciphering the correct word) happened in less than a second! I am not exaggerating, I promise!!
Ha! So much for not being embarrased.... (in retrospect..only if i had said out loud any of the things that came to my mind, who knows i might have been able to steer the team away from thinking of a potato!)
At first, I thought the performer had pointed wrongly at me while he was just trying to point at that other guy standing right behind me and very close (who I spoke those words to, in the first place!) ... and just when i was about to give this whole thing, the benefit of doubt (we were standing close, rem?) ...it just hit me - he said “she” and not “he”.
WTF, really!!
Ok ok, I know I planted the idea of building an instantaneous association between “looks like” and “potato”…but the context was that guy NOT me, for crying out loud. Maybe all my team members have the selective hearing syndrome. But really, all of them yelling? In UNISON? As if it was the most obvious answer? No, scratch that. As if it was the ONLY answer??
DAMN!!!!
Moral of the story – Being a hostess of a fun night which includes alcohol, barbecue, a fantastic view from the balcony and a lot of games like Uno, Taboo, Playing cards and so on.. might add to a great fun quotient ….But in the end, doesn’t guarantee that the next time anyone says potato, you are NOT the first visual that appears in all those peoples head!!
Yeah, the world is a funny place …apparently so is my body shape. :P
Maybe next time when i am explaining the rules for playing taboo to all those present/particpating in the game, i should include "not pointing towards me when the word is potato" as the first rule!
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