What a thing to say.

Label Appreciation Society is reconvening with # 12 in a (3-way tie) Random Postings.

The label random postings could easily be placed on 40 % of my posts. I am in my very nature random. However, I have saved this label for the truly random like my post about alternate names for our home school or when I solicited opinions about keeping my beard or shaving it off, or my classic April 1 2009 post how High Fructose Corn Syrup works for me.

Today's random post is about a cocktail party game that Amy and I made up called what a thing to say. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that between Amy and myself we have attended a total of zero cocktail parties. I mean we're only in our forties, we're pacing ourselves. I just imagine it's a game that would go over well at cocktail parties. We play it at social gatherings like weddings, wakes, funerals, reunions the sort of thing where much small talk will occur.

The way we play is like this. Before the EIQ (Event in Question) one of us thinks a phrase that the other person has to say and the # of different times they have to say it. They are not supposed to reveal that they are playing a game and just work it into conversations. In November of 1997, Amy and I were recently engaged and were at my grandfather's wake. This is the first time I remember playing. I gave Amy the phrase "People don't floss as much as they used to." She played it like a champ. One year at Christmas with Amy's side of the family I was to use the phrase "the all-mighty dollar" and I just kept bringing it up into conversation and no one other than Amy had any clue that it was all pre-arranged.

Other phrases soon followed like "I don't like (whoever had just been mentioned) they supported the war movement" this was funny at the time because it was the late 90's and there was really no war movement to support. We still laugh when we remember Amy telling her Aunt that she doesn't like Oprah Winfrey because she "supported the war movement." Especially when her aunt thought Amy had made it up just then.

What a thing to say has not been all that popular with us in the past 8-10 years as we have both been to family parties where we don't remember having any conversations because we were so busy herding children. Now that our children are becoming a little more self regulating it may become a game we play more often. Maybe at our first cocktail party.

Next Time: The return of 7 word September