Before I get in to the story I need to give a little background to the older demographic. Those of us in our 40s grew up with a set of drinking games that apparently no longer exist (well, outside of retirement homes I guess). We played the good old games like quarters, Mexican, Bullshit, that crazy counting game, etc. I never really considered it, but as each successive generation feels an obligation to break from the past in terms of clothing, music, etc., the same is apparently also true for drinking games.
Today's drinking games are a touch more active. Which I think it great! Nothing more entertaining than active drunks! A few I've become familiar with (by hanging our with the current crop of college students) are baseball, beer pong, and flip cup. They're mostly team games, and involve tossing ping-pong balls into cups of beer, drinking the beer, and (optionally) flipping the cups so they land upside down. I've spent a couple good nights observing these next-generation games at recent parties at the college boy's house. Boatloads of fun!
OK. So the stage is set.
Denis got invited to a sleepover party at the house of one of his 6th grade classmates. The boy's name is Joey, and he's the youngest of 3 (or 4) brothers. I think the oldest brother is in college and there's 1 or 2 in HS. Denis was very happy to be invited, as he and Joey aren't always the best of friends.
I dropped him off around 6 on a Saturday night. I stayed up fairly late just in case there was a phone call, but none ever came. So it appeared he had a good time. I picked him up the following morning after church. Denis was a wreck. According to him they had stayed up all night, not falling asleep until about 7am. And they got up at 10. Rough night!
I asked him what they did. In true pre-teen fashion he gave me a couple grunted answers. Watched movies. Played video games. That didn't last us the whole ride home, so I pressed a bit, What else did you do? Anything else that was fun?
Oh yeah, he said, brightening up: we played marshmallow pong!! Now of course I wasn't familiar with the game, so I asked him to describe it. And as he did the most curious thing happened. It all seemed so familiar. The game is played on a ping-pong table. You pour a bit of soda into several cups and arrange them on your end of the table while your opponents do the same on their side. Then you take turns tossing marshmallows into the cups; and when one goes in the opponent has to drink the soda in the cup.
Is this sounding slightly familiar to anyone? If not, go back and re-read the second paragraph. Yup. They were practicing kiddie-version drinking games!! Isn't that great? You send the boy off to a sleepover and he comes back with some real life skills. I was so proud. But I wasn't nearly as proud as I was happy. That I picked him up instead of Mimi. She would have exploded!
So here's the dilemma. He says he was good at it. Does that mean I should bring him to Bobby's next party? Tough call...
