After my last attempt at sand volleyball, I swore I’d never subject myself to such torture again. Well, this weekend I gave in to my pestering siblings and played another game. Two, actually.
My family went back to Destin this weekend, for a kind-of-spontaneous, we-need-closure-before-we-can-move-forward-with-our-lives type of a trip. (Remember I told you about my recent obsession with The Bachelorette? Those were Ashley’s catchphrases, which Kenzie and I now like to incorporate into daily life. Ashley always needed closure, before she could move “foe-ward.”)
So, we headed out bright and early Thursday, after much screaming and yelling at 6 a.m. to make sure the whole house was awake. We piled into the car and were sitting on the beach by 10:30. By noon, I was sound asleep in a beach chair.
The group included Mom, Dad, Kenzie, Tyler and Trevor; cousins Richie, Philip and Zac; boyfriend Andrew and Kenzie’s friend Gabrielle.
By Saturday afternoon, I was awake and relaxing and reading a book – Sophie Kinsella’s latest Shopaholic novel – when I was rudely interrupted for a game of sand volleyball. I protested for a minute, while having a flashback of my last encounter with sand volleyball. (Quick summary: I was sweating and barely able to move; I was … an abomination, to put it mildly. Refer to “Another day in paradise” blog post for full story.)
But I noticed the clouds in the sky and figured the weather was on my side this time. So I did some quick stretching, and I hit the court.
(I didn’t really stretch. … Andrew did, though. Feel free to make fun of him for this.)
After deciding the teams, we started hitting the ball around. (I think that’s called volleying?) We played a few games, and by golly, I did okay. Tyler even said to me, “Hey Sam, you’re okay.”
I may start training for the Olympics.
Tyler said even more than that, if you really want to know. He said, “Sam, you’re actually kind of athletic.”
Well, I don’t want to brag, but I have two claims to fame in the sports world; they are every so often fondly remembered at the family dinner table.
When I was in fifth grade, I proved to be a somewhat valuable player for the Blue Bombers. Halfway through the championship game, the score was something terrible, like 10-0; we were losing. By the time one of the later innings came around, someone calculated that everyone had to get a hit for us to have a chance at winning. Not only that, we had to beat the clock.
Miraculously, by the time I took the plate to bat, all was going according to plan. The score was 12-10; we were still losing, but not by much.
Without really understanding the importance of my turn at bat, I swung my hardest and saw the ball go flying into right field. I took off running and as I rounded third base, the assistant coach (Dad) was telling me to run all the way home. Then somewhere between third base and home plate, I was running so fast that I began to double over.
I nearly fell flat on my face, but I didn’t. I made it home just before the ball made it to the catcher. The score was then 12-12, and we went on to win the game. I got so many hugs and high fives when I got back to the dugout. I felt like a star.
My second claim to fame happened in third grade. I made an unforgettable shot in a basketball game. … I scored in the wrong basket and earned a point for the other team.
And that wraps up Sam’s Journey Through Sports 101.
Compared to my questionable athleticism, however, my talent for board games is way more impressive. This weekend, after long days at the beach, my family retired to the condo each night to play a game called Salad Bowl.
Let me tell you briefly how Salad Bowl works. You have three rounds; the first is Catchphrase, the second is Charades, and the third is Password. Before the game begins, each player writes ten words or phrases on slips of paper. All these papers then go in a big bowl.
We then begin passing the bowl around, and each player has a minute to get his/her team to guess as many of these words as possible. First, we go through all the words doing Catchphrase. Once the bucket is empty, we dump the words back in and go through them again doing Charades. Then, the last round is Password, which means you give one-word clues only.
Example words from our games this weekend: punctual, quizzical, fickle (all me); Emit Smith, Dylan (Kenzie’s friend from Hawaii), Delta, eye for an eye, Lord of the Flies, John Grisham, etc.
Last night, the teams were as follows:
Champions
Sam
Mom
Tyler
Andrew
Losers
Kenzie
Dad
Trevor
Gabrielle
We always try to make the teams fair, separating those who are around the same age or the same talent level. Hence, we separated Kenzie and me (Kenzie and I are never allowed to be on the same team), Mom and Dad, Tyler and Trevor. And the leftovers, Andrew and Gabrielle.
It proved wise to separate Mom and Dad, as they suffered various setbacks due to … their years.
Mom’s first turn went like this: With her glasses on, she drew her first word. She read it, whipped off her glasses and began acting. We quickly guessed the word, so Mom drew another from the bowl. She then stared at the paper for a second and then scrambled for her glasses. She put her glasses back on for a second to read the word, and then whipped them off again. She wasted many valuable seconds whipping her glasses on and off, until her brain registered that she needed to just leave them on for the duration of the minute.
During another of her turns during the Charades Round, she suddenly got a Charlie Horse in her leg and could do nothing but sit motionless on the floor, laughing through the pain while we continued shouting guesses at her. To make matters worse, the other team was unsympathetic and allowed us no time to make up for this.
Dad’s setbacks, however, made up for our lost time.
The bowl was filled with small pieces of looseleaf, each of which was folded in half only once. This simple folding presented a huge obstacle for Dad. Each time he drew a word, he brought the paper right up to his face and peered at it over his glasses, mumbling in his frustration, while trying to open the little piece of paper.
During another notable Charades moment, Gabrielle resorted to hula dancing as a clue for her team. (The word was Dylan – Kenzie’s friend from Hawaii.) She ended up hula dancing for the entire minute, while Kenzie guessed in vain and Dad couldn’t stop laughing. While Gabrielle danced away – very angrily – Dad fell out of his chair and literally began rolling on the floor laughing. He therefore was incapable of making any guesses that round.
Many more setbacks occurred – such as someone hurling a lead pencil at me – but my team pulled through them, and we emerged victorious.
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