As I mentioned in an earlier post, my former student Skyler saw me after the youth production of Oliver Twist on Friday, and we arranged to have a game night. Skyler saw that through, and so we hosted a fun little evening of games on Monday.

All of the students who showed up were former members of my improv club, the Royal Fools, and/or members of my now-defunct Irish dancing club at CVCA. Skyler was there with his girlfriend, Micaela, and Skyler’s sister Zivana was there with her boyfriend George. It was just the right-sized group – six of us in all; it was big enough to feel festive while still feeling intimate.

We played a total of three games. We started the evening with a game that Skyler and Zivana brought with them, a game where you had to be the last person to come up with a word from a category that began with a particular letter. So, you might have “Movie titles” as a category, with the letter “B.” It sounded easy, but turned out to be harder than I thought it would be.

We then played a new-to-me-and-Mer game called Funglish, where you had to get the others to say specific words as you described the object using words printed on 120 different tiles. Again, it was trickier than I thought it would be.

We finished the evening by playing 25 Words or Less, a great word game where you try to get your team to say words on a card, but the catch is that you are limited in how many words you can use to describe the words on your card. So, you might only have ten words you can say to get your team to guess all five words on the game card. It is a very clever game, and it is a lot of fun to play or watch.

Skyler also added a twelve-pack of tacos to the mix, and I made cookies. We ate and laughed a lot and had a wonderfully good time.