Pin Something On This Donkey

It’s a sad fact that no one has invented a decent party game since Pin The Tail On The Donkey. Now that was a great game, involving a sharpened object wielded in a precarious fashion by a blindfolded and highly excitable person.

Pin The Tail On The Donkey (or PTTOND, as it’s known in this text-message age) was my favorite party game for a long time. Then someone’s mom ruined it by switching from using thumb tacks to secure the tail – which held out the exciting possibility of drawing blood if you “accidentally” pinned another kid, preferably a kid you didn’t much like – to namby-pamby scotch tape that wouldn’t do more than yank out a couple of arm hairs. Things have pretty much gone downhill in the party-game arena ever since then.

At adult parties, games are used by the host to prevent guests from noticing that all of the food has already been eaten. A couple of weeks ago, my husband and I went to a Valentine’s Day party, and when the food ran out, we were cajoled into playing a fairly tame version of The Newlywed Game. Do you remember that old game show where couples who had recently walked down the aisle were separately asked a series of questions – many of which included the word whoopee -- to see how well they knew each other?

The honeymooners who gave matching answers to the most questions got to go home with something wonderful like a new Amana range or an apricot-colored lounge suite. But what made the show funny were the misfits, those arm-punching pairs who didn’t seem to know each other at all. They got sent home with only garden hoses and blenders, and the grooms likely found themselves spending a few nights on the couch.

In our game, my husband and I – despite 20 years of wedded bliss -- definitely fell into the misfit category. You’d have thought we were there on a first date. By the end of the evening, I was ready to pin something far more painful than a tail to the donkey’s posterior I married.

Now before you decide that I’m a terrible wife, wrap your mind around this: my man couldn’t even remember the name of the church in which we got married. He forgot where we had our first kiss. In two decades of looking at my face, he had failed to notice that I wear pink – not red, never red – lipstick. He didn’t know my favorite song or my favorite movie. The man who has memorized the vital statistics of every football player living or dead and who can recite plot lines from umpteen episodes of Law and Order could not recall what I was wearing when he proposed. He was unable even to correctly guess my favorite comfort food – chocolate (duh!).

In fact, out of 20 not-so-newlywed questions, we managed to come up with the same answer exactly once. Amazingly, we both knew which part of my body he likes best (none of your business which one). And not surprisingly, we ended up with the lowest score of the game. We also did our share of arm-punching each other over wrong answers, and we provided a great deal of amusement to our friends. As we were leaving, one of them suggested that perhaps we should spend more time together.

Or maybe we should just avoid playing party games. Unless we’re blindfolded and trying to locate a donkey’s backside.

~  © Jackie Papandrew 2008 ~

Jackie Papandrew is an award-winning writer, syndicated humor columnist, coffee addict and mom to a motley crew of children and pets who provide a steady stream of column ideas and dirt. She's also wife to a very patient man who had no idea, years ago when he still had time to escape, what he was getting himself into. Visit her website at:  JackiePapandrew.com

[ by Jackie Papandrew Copyright © 2008, (me@jackiepapandrew.com) -- submitted by: Jackie Papandrew ]