Getting a game in edgewise...

Sunday the family was invited to a games night at a friend's house. Just before we headed out to the party, I had gathered a couple of our own games in case anyone wanted to play. At the last moment, I just decided to take a kids' game as well, just in case. I dropped Snail's Pace Race into the bag.

They had invited a few couples to get together. There was lots of food and chatting and general good times being had. But after almost two hours, no sign of games.

It's fine, really. I know I was was least social person in that party and I get tired of talking pretty quickly. However, everyone else seemed to be having a good time and I didn't want to spoil it, so I found a deck of cards and set up Beleaguered Castle* for myself. At about the point that I realized I had no further moves, our host's 4 year-old son came over to see what I was doing. He proceeded to grab up piles of cards to show me something he could do, which I'm pretty sure from what he was saying that he was talking about doing a bridge shuffle. He didn't actually perform one, but he could sure tell me all about it.


 By the time we had finished picking up the cards, my 5 year-old, Jeanette, was standing by me as well. I asked if they wanted to play a game. Yes! I would get a play in that night, didn't matter what! So I pulled out Snail's Pace Race, told our host's son how to play and the three of us were off to the races!

It was a hit! As we finished our first game, he asked if we could play again. Same after the second play. Unfortunately for him, it was time for us to go home (it was after 9:00 and Jeanette had school the next day). In our two games, the red snail was the snail to put your money on. The way the game is supposed to be played (though I haven't introduced this rule to the kids) is that the players "wager" on a snail. You win if you bet on the snail that comes in first, which was green snail the first game and orange snail the second game. You also win if the snail you bet on comes in last; the red snail was the slowest of the slow in both of our races!

So there's my story of inspiration. I am very glad I listened to that inner voice and grabbed a game for kids.

* I have recently learned that I play a variation of Beleaguered Castle which has added rules to make it easier to win. I do still do not find it easy to win, I maybe complete 1 in 20 games.