One %$@#ing word. And who doesn't know Patrick Stewart?!

On a recent saturday, I was at a small gathering of friends to eat homemade curry, vegetables, and chicken tikka masala. Following the meal, we played a rousting hour of "The Name Game," where players team up in groups of two, each player writes the names of some famous people on scraps of paper and deposits them in the hat, and teams take turns having 1 person draw a paper and say one word by way of a clue while the other person has one chance to guess the name.

Some gems:

"Traitor."

"Uh...Napoleon Bonaparte!" [how they managed to get that one still baffles me. I would have said 'cannons' or 'overcompensation.'] 

"MILF."

"Madonna."

"Picard."

"Uh...Ok, Star Trek. Captain Kirk. Damn, who is that actor? He's in a bunch of commercials. Give up."

"Dude...not Kirk. Picard. Patrick Stewart!"

"Who the hell is that?"

Owlblink.

The three girls at the party were all of the giggly variety, so we gave them every possible advantage in a futile attempt to keep the game moving. For instance...

"Ok, take the laptop. If you don't know who somebody is, you can google it." [I know. To be fair, they needed it.]

"Ok, you three are a team. One person draws, and then decides if she wants the third player to help her give the clue or to help the second player guess."

"Whatever. If the clue is hyphenated, just go ahead. Please, hurry up."

Kaela had some trouble understanding the (mind-numbingly simple) rules.

K: "Wait, ok. So I can only give them one word as a clue?"

G: "Yes, Kaela."

K: "Haha ok I get it. But what if it's part of a title? Like, 'word, blank.'"

G: "That's fine. I mean, you can't be like 'PRIDE hmm hm-hm-hmm' but yeah, whatever."

K: "Ok. So just one word, right?"

G: [Groan.] "Yes Kaela."

K: "Ok. Uh...shit. Uh...HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL!"

Owlblink.

K: "Oh wait! Shit!"

Sometimes I feel like parlor games were invented to identify slower individuals for ridicule. Then I think, "Eh. They probably just didn't have slower individuals back then. That's why parlor games worked." Then I feel like slamming my head in a door jamb.