Something Fishy

I recently went to my family’s beach condo in Dewey Beach with some college friends for a weekend escape. It was an enjoyable weekend; similar to the Zak Brown Band lyric I got my toes in the water, a$$ in the sand, Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand. Life is good today. My toes were all that got in the water because, despite the unusually warm May weather, the water temperature was cold enough to cause hypothermia. And thankfully my rear didn’t end up in the sand, despite my friends’ attempt at digging a crater under my beach towel while I was taking a leisurely stroll.

Anyway, on Saturday evening, at Stuart’s suggestion, we elected to play Fish Bowl (a game involving two teams, and three rounds). After all, we were at the beach, and had many conversations spanning the sea spectrum, from the science of estuaries to the mating patterns of sea horses. Rules are outlined below:

Each player contributes five nouns to a collective “fish bowl”. Each team alternates minutes attempting to get fellow teammates to guess the nouns on the cards. In the first round, the describer can use anything except for the actual noun to describe it. For example, if the noun is immigration, the describer might say Arizona just passed a racist law about it. The second round uses the exact same nouns, but the describer can only use one word. For example, Arizona. The final round is charades, so in this round the actor might point to the can of Arizona iced tea sitting on the coffee table. The winning team is simply the team that accrues the most points over the three rounds. Simple, right?

Well. The past two times I played, the game went as follows. Stuart assigns each individual to a team. My team always ends up being my two loyal friends, Hurley and Rhino. The other team always ends up being EVERYONE ELSE. The first time, the team was literally Hurley, Rhino, and myself versus 10 everyone elses and one Stuart. I cried foul play the entire game but nobody else seemed to care! Obviously my team lost. Well, the second time, I was ready to redeem my damaged pride, sure that with a level playing field, my team would emerge victorious. It turns out the field wasn’t level, my team was charging up an incline the entire time, Stuart standing at the top. So third time’s the charm. I was pleased to humor Stuart, finally wrestling her to her defeat. Shockingly, when the teams were formed, I was on the team of three, Stuart on the team of four. Not surprisingly, my team lost, however, if the score was calculated based on the metric points per team member, my team would have won!

I’m currently petitioning the officials at gamesecretary.com to get the rules changed. I should have known Stuart was up to something fishy as soon as I smelled the sea air.