Category — Ungaming

For those who didn’t read my blog years ago when we used to do this fairly regularly (by which I mean a bunch of times and then not at all), this is a big online round of the Ungame.  What is the Ungame, you ask?  It is only the most fabulous board game ever made.  You just roll the dice and move around the board, talking about your feelings.  To bring it online, I’ve added an additional component of chaining comments so you find a new blog to read too.

Directions: answer the question in the comment section. Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain. #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc). The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments. The last person who comments gets… screwed. My answer is below the picture.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: IF YOU COULD MAKE A LONG DISTANCE PHONE CALL, WHOM WOULD YOU CALL?

Um… the cards can be a little dated on our 1970s version of the game.

As a side note, my grandmother was so freaked out about me paying long distance charges that even after I got a flat-rate calling plan, she wouldn’t believe me and she’d hang up on me because she said the call was too expensive.

So I’m going to take this card to mean who would you want to call that you can’t just pick up the phone and call.  Which out-rules most people I am in contact with since… you know… flat-rate calling plans and free cell phone minutes means that I’m fairly comfortable calling them whenever I damn well please.

I would love to talk to my first boyfriend and see if he really became a rabbi, but I realized that after I found out that piece of information, I wouldn’t want to keep talking.  The same goes for a bunch of people from my past.  Except one.

I had a doppelganger at camp; a girl who looked so much like me that even my friends would mistake us.  Her name was Michelle and we had very similar last names.  There were a few sets of twins at camp and someone had the idea to round up all the twins for a special picture.  Michelle and I protested, explaining that we weren’t related, but the counselors thought we were just being obnoxious tweens and made us get in the picture.  So we’re in the camp’s twin picture in the camp yearbook.

Beyond our similar physical characteristics, we were alike in temperament and interests and expressions.  I lost touch with her after high school, and I would love to call her (long distance!) and see how her life turned out.  Did she end up getting married (maybe to a Josh)?  Was she infertile?  Did she have twins?  Was she a writer?  Wouldn’t it be bizarre if I found her and discovered that our lives literally were parallel paths all these years later?

Spooky.

Who would you call?

Directions: answer the question in the comment section. Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain. #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc). The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments. The last person who comments gets…screwed. My answer is below the picture.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: WHAT COLOUR DO YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU THINK OF HAPPINESS?

For me, it would have to be orange. Or a deep red. Or an orange-y yellow.  Something bright.

What about you? And if you can give us the html colour number, all the better so we can check your choice out ourselves.

Directions: answer the question in the comment section.  Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc).  The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments gets…screwed.  My answer is below the picture.

Interpret this question broadly–trophy can be any type of award from a Pulitzer to the Nobel Prize to an Olympic gold medal.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: WHAT KIND OF TROPHY WOULD YOU LIKE TO WIN.

I have always wanted to win an Olympic gold medal and stand on the podium and have them lower the American flag over my head and have everyone sing the National Anthem.  During the 2002 Olympics, I was so sad watching the athletes and knowing I would never achieve this.  But I won’t be sad this year when the Olympics roll around again.  The reason will be this week’s Show and Tell.

Directions: answer the question in the comment section.  Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc.  If the commenter above you didn’t leave an address, just go one above that.  The point is to find new blogs/leave a comment–not stress).  The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments gets…screwed.  My answer is below the picture.

A follow up to the last question, and one much more deliciously terrible.  Please, no googleable names used in your answer.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: DESCRIBE THE BEST WORST TEACHER YOU EVER HAD.

My answer: As a former teacher, one who has a great respect for all teachers, we also do need to acknowledge that some just suck at their job.  That they should have never been allowed around not only children–or in the case of college and beyond, adults–but they probably shouldn’t be allowed around humans in general.

While I have some true horror stories, from the professor who would make me kneel on the floor when I came to speak to him (he’d sit on a chair and we’d kneel on the tiled office floor) to the English teacher who left her liquor bottles in the rubbish bin and taught us nothing for an entire year, my favourite terrible teacher was a college professor.

He was flown in for the semester to teach a class on Scandinavian history–and all apologies to the Scandinavians, but the years of Scandinavian history that we covered sucked in comparison to your exciting European neighbours–and he spoke no English.  He had someone translate his notes into English and then he read them off the page by sounding out the words.  It was three hours once a week of English read phonetically off the page.  And if you didn’t show up, you couldn’t get credit for the class.  Three weeks in a row, he must have gotten his pages mixed up because he read the same lesson on the Russification of Finland.  Three times.  Did I mention that it was in phonetic English?  And you couldn’t ask him questions because he didn’t know any English?  You couldn’t even ask if you could be excused to use the bathroom because he didn’t know the word “bathroom” and we didn’t know the word for bathroom in Finnish.

Once a week.  Every week.  Three hours.  Just for three credits.

Directions: answer the question in the comment section.  Then leave a comment on the blog of the commenter directly before you (so it’s a chain.  #2 comments on #1, #3 comments on #2, etc.  If the commenter above you didn’t leave an address, just go one above that.  The point is to find new blogs/leave a comment–not stress).  The first person who comments gets a free ride and does not need to leave any comments.  The last person who comments gets…screwed.  My answer below the picture.

In case you can’t read it, the card states: DESCRIBE THE BEST TEACHER YOU EVER HAD.

My answer (because if I put it in the comments below, I’d mess up the chain): this was really hard because I kept juggling different choices.  Do I go with my high school physics teacher who was so great that I still remembered the formulas today?  Or my mentor from grad school?  Or my kindergarten teacher (I can tell you who isn’t on my list: my bitch nursery school teacher who didn’t let me sit next to the boy I had a crush on for the last Shabbat and instead sat me next to the boy with poison oak)?  I’m going to go with two because…hey…it’s the Ungame and anything goes.

#1: my college professor, Ron Kuka, who gave me coffee if I swung by his office in the winter before I walked up the hill, who was such an incredible writer himself that he made me fall in love with the short story, and who brought out the best in me as a student.  I can never thank him enough for all that he taught me about writing and the road he set me on.

#2: The story behind these words is too hard for me to write about, but I once had a professor–a woman–tell me that I had to get a thicker skin and essentially unlearn everything I knew about being a nice girl.  That I needed to stop being meek and grab the world by the cock and kick it in the balls for good measure.  She told me that there would always be people in the world who would try to bring me down and I had two choices, to kick them in the figurative balls or to drop out of everything and have nothing to show for my life in the end.  And while she may sound like a big bitch from this tough love talk, she inspired me to stick up for myself, to take what I rightfully earn, and to work my ass off.  And while she really wanted me to unlearn the nice girl, instead, I kept nice Melissa around and tempered her with the ability to deliver a few knee thrusts to the proverbial groin, but only when she really really needs to do so.