Games played

Then, while we were doing the dishes on a good day, usually after a very happy meal, or festival celebration, we often improved ourselves or annoyed each other. Sometimes the arguments were not about who was doing what for the dish washing, but was over the spelling or sound of a word. There was a game we used to play where the dishwasher would say a word, and everyone had to take turns and say a word that rhymed. Of course, ‘Orange’ was not allowed. Neither was Caveat, Width or Vacuum. Mind you there was usually a laugh as someone tried to rhyme some words. For example Vacuum which doesn’t actually have a true rhyme, but one might try to just use the ending sound e.g. assume, balloon (nice try). That was usually allowed for the younger players only.

Another favourite was ‘I went to London.” The caller would start, “I went to London and with me I took my ….? The caller would insert a word e.g. “toothbrush”. The next person would say the same introduction. Say, toothbrush and then add another item. Slowly each player would add to the list but it must be said in order. As we got older and better at the game we added descriptions to the items. It would be limited to three words describing the item and the item itself. So as far as memory training went, it worked. The best I recall was 16 items with half of them involving at least three words each. It sounded something like this when it got to the fourth person for the third time.

“I went to London and with me I took my yellow handled toothbrush, my green coloured cardboard passport, my fascinating battery powered hairdryer, my extremely warm mohair jumper, my brightly coloured oilskin raincoat, my collapsible self-inflating dirigible, my fluorescent alligator rucksack,  my continuously rotating balancing monkey, my singularly vibrant portable stove, my exciting crimson umbrella, my viciously dangerous tarantula spider and my…..” to which they would add one more. Not only did it help the memory, but really increased the vocabulary and since you were trying to catch each other out, you became fairly imaginative in your items.

The main problem with this was it often dragged out the washing and drying of the dishes, as you stopped to count out each item on your fingers and the others watched to see if you would fail. Instead of 10 or fifteen minutes it could have taken us, the time would sometimes drag out a little. After a half hour or so a voice would usually call out from the lounge “Will you kids please hurry up and finish those dishes”. Or depending on the fun of the game we payed, at other times Father would come out and tell us to “Be quiet!” as he couldn’t hear the radio, or television.

(continued tomorrow)