Absolute balderdash

Last week over lunch, Eddie and Shirin told me a story about a game of Balderdash with someone they knew.  I held up my hand.  "Wait a minute, what's Balderdash?"  Eddie explained the rules of the game and I thought that it sounded like an evening of non-stop, rolling on the floor laughter.  

So a bunch of colleagues from work decided to meet for dinner, drinks and games on Saturday and test what good liars we are.  This is a group of co-workers that I often have morning meetings with and given the conversation we usually enjoy, I fully expected them to come with their sneakiness guns blazing.  

Guess whose house we descended upon?  (Why does every child have their name done in cross-stitch when they are born except me?  Tonight I will demand an explanation from my parents.)

Jia Min, Crystal, Denise and Shirin were as prompt as they could be and what I really liked about meeting with this group was how quick and easy it was to arrange a gathering.

Eddie had an Edward Gorey poster in her bedroom and since I'm not familiar with Edward Gorey, I thought for a moment that they were the drawings of David Roberts who illustrates Chris Priestly's Tales of Terror books that I talked about here.  Turns out their drawing styles are very similar.

By the way, I've ripped through all the Tales of Terror books since then and I highly recommend them to kids who love creepy stories but hate to read.  Some of the stories are just deeply bizarre, in a good way and sometimes when we have ten minutes to spare, I'll read a little for my students.  They love it and insist on having the lights off.

Eddie's dad and brother put together a delicious dinner, complete with cocktails made from scratch and a cheeseboard.  (I contributed the smoked cheese in the corner!)  I ate tonnes at the table then we continued munching on the chips and chocolate that others had brought.

A frosty Pimms cocktail with apples in and a delicious array of very tender meat and green vegetables. 

After dinner, everyone gathered round the coffee table and the game master explained the rules.  Basically each round, the game master picks one thing from a card like the one above.  It can fall under the category of a random word, a name, the initials of something, a movie title or a date.

Everyone has to make up what they think the words means, the significance of the date or the plot of the movie and then the game master reads out all the answers and players guess which the correct one is.  The fun is in just how ridiculous all the options are, including the correct one!

Also, look at that list.  How should anyone know what the heck a Pilwiz or who Plennie Wingo is? 

Our group of seven was fairly imaginative and the answers ranged from extremely serious and credible to the fairly ridiculous sounding.  The movie plots tended to yield the best answers because of the creative license taken.  Jia Min came up with a plot for The Adventures of the Queen (which ran something like "A priest, Charles Smith decides to embark upon a new career as a drag Queen named Clair Voyant") that had us in stitches.

Edie's brother, Harold, created a storyline for the movie "A Jar" which ran, "A mystery about a half-opened door".  Everyone blinked in confusion until it sank in and we collapsed laughing on the floor.

I only took pictures of half the attendees because the rest of us were sitting in shadow but rest assured everyone else was smiling this widely.

In between chatting about boybands with Jia Min, Edie constantly trying to break into my phone, scoffing snacks and shrieking with laughter over everyone's nonsensical answers, I had an awesome time.  Hopefully, we can have Part 2 soon!

I leave you with some scribbled answers to questions including the suggested plots of two movies, The Adventures of the Queen and my favourite, Dirty Little Billy.  I was going to say that you just can't make this stuff up, but um, we really did.