Christmas Time With Cap'n Klutz

And the catching-up continues! Yesterday I talked about the All-Singles Christmas party; today we get to explore the “Young” Singles Christmas party.

One Sunday a couple of weeks after the All-Singles party, my class had our own party at Cap'n Cluck's house. As usual, I got there a little early and found out that Bruiser had gotten there even earlier and had been pressganged into helping Cluck decorate Christmas cookies. Luckily they had finished with that by the time I arrived so I was able to avoid being roped into it (I would not always be so fortunate . . .), and he and I instead started throwing the football around. As others started trickling in some worked themselves into our game of catch; we even had two balls going at once for a while. Of course, being the klutz that I am, I somehow managed to slice one of my fingers open going for the ball, something I didn't realize until I had the thought "gee, my finger sure feels damp," and looked down to see prodigious bleeding. Luckily for all, Cap'n Cluck was able to capture my retreat inside in search of bandages on film for all to see.

Thanks, Cap'n!

We had a really good turn-out for the party, about 20 people or so. After dinner we had a white elephant gift exchange, although quite a few of the people seemed to have misunderstood the concept; several nice gifts handed out, a label I don't apply to what I brought: a powder-blue frisbee bearing a picture of a teddy bear and the slogan "Give Hugs Not Drugs" and multiple copies of an issue of Fantastic Four. Smooth Money was the lucky recipient of that bounty. The package I picked had a nice little blanket, which was stolen from me by Scubagirl when it was her turn to pick. Here you can see her gloating over her prize:

My next pick turned out to be a hand-held Texas Hold-Em game, which also got swiped from me; I wasn't too saddened by that, though, because it meant I got to swipe the blanket back; I felt no remorse. I mean, Scubagirl got to pick again, and just look at the joy on her face with her new gift:

Okay, so maybe that's more of a "noooooooooo!" look on her face . . .

After the gift exchange several people had to leave, but not before the obligatory group pose with our bounty.

Those of us remaining got ready to play games, and after some discussion decided to play the game that Cap'n Cluck just got during the exchange: Loaded Questions.

The concept is pretty straight-forward: you draw a card; ask the group a question such as "What TV character do you most identify with" or "What's the worst thing you've ever done" or the like; everyone writes down their answers and passes them to the person to your right, who reads the answers out loud; you try to guess who put what, and get points for every one you got right. I'd played LQ for the first time a few years back at the Eskimo's house, and had bought a copy afterwards, thinking it would be a good ice-breaker game for the Singles. But, the two times I broke it out at Singles functions, it hadn't really been that big of a hit. But, that had been quite a while back, and with the fluid nature of the Singles group we were dealing with almost an entirely new group of people, so we dove in; there were 12 of us playing, so we split into teams of two. We quickly discovered that LQ does not loan itself well to large groups or team-play. But despite some stumbling along the way, it did serve as a pretty effective ice-breaker/getting-to-know-you type of game. Some of my favorite moments from the game:

• The question is "What's the most painful thing that's ever happened to you?" One thing flashed into my head, but I put something else down ("animal attack") and passed my answer in. Scubagirl was in charge of collecting the answers; as M.D. (formerly known as Stunt, and no, you don't get to know what M.D. stands for yet) handed her his answer, she glanced at it with a puzzled look on her face, turned to him, and asked "What does that mean?" I knew instantly what he had put: the same thing that had initially popped into my head. My gut instinct was proven right when Scubagirl read the answers aloud: "Getting racked." As we had to explain the definition to the confused member of the group, I was surprised at how many people there weren't familiar with the phrase, although at least one other guy was, as The Cable Guy had also put that down as his answer.
• The question is "How many of your current friends have you known for over 10 years." Since I've known pretty much all of the Parkerites since 93 or 94, my number was pretty high; in fact, it was the highest number read. But, since it was non-blog monkey Scubagirl guessing, she picked me for a much lower number; the martyr in me was secretly hoping she'd guess that I was the one who put down "Zero", but she put me at around the three-friend mark.
• The question is "Who do you know you're smarter than?" Bruiser's answer: "Democrats."
• The question is "If you could be any character from any novel, who would you be?" The strategy for a large portion of the group on this one was to think of some movie they had seen which had also been a novel; one person put down "The Terminator," which I suppose was technically okay since there have been novelizations of the films . . . Bruiser and I were the guessers on that one, and we failed pretty miserably; I had unfortunately forgotten Cap'n Cluck's comment on CoIM about liking Nancy Drew books, and thus missed an easy point.
  

After we finally finished up LQ half of the contingent headed out. Those that remained toasted with some non-alcoholic sparkling cider (which we had to practically force down Bruiser, who didn't seem to accept that it was not a prohibited substance for Southern Baptists) and then moved the furniture around for a little bit o' dancing (which is not as much of a prohibited activity for Southern Baptists as it once was) until Cap'n Cluck's dad wandered out to suggest to C.C. that it was about time for her guests to vacate the premises. We headed on home with our lovely gifts; some of the Singles got together again on New Years Eve, but I was still in OK at the time, so my next big unchronicled Singles gathering wouldn't take place until the end of January and the All-Singles Game Night.