CATCHING ON

Yesterday afternoon Sweet Neighbor Girl came over to "play" two different times. We read aloud an article in the newspaper and then looked through a Ripley's Believe It Or Not book. When I was a kid, Ripley's made little $.25 paperback editions that Brother Beans and I would flip through while passing away time and gas in the bathroom. But now huge tomes are published, with colored pictures of every freak-a-zoid imaginable--the human pin cushion, lizard man, wolf girl, you name it. After Sweet Neighbor Girl shouted "eeeewwwww" about 50 times, I finally told her just to take the book home and read it at her leisure.

But she was back in a few hours--this time with an empty picture frame. I can take a hint, so we went to the computer, opened her photo folder, and she selected a picture to be printed up and put into the frame. One of her with her sister and puppy before the cute little mutt became a certified monster. After that we went outside to re-hang snowflakes that had blown off the snowflake tree (not to be confused with the bottle tree) earlier in the week.

Big Bore was out working in the garage, and when he saw us he brought out a plastic bag and said, "Here's something for you two to have fun with." It was the old Catch Phrase game that I thought I had tossed out the previous Sunday when I'd put the house on a diet and thrown away useless "stuff." Apparently he'd seen it in the trash, retrieved it, and set it aside.

I told Sweet Neighbor Girl how to play the word game, complete with its obnoxious beeper, and she was immediately hooked. I used to have it in my classroom for my sophomores to play if/when we had some free time at the end of the week, and it was always a rousing hit. So SNG and I sat in the grass on this beautiful afternoon and got silly describing words and phrases to each other. When it was time for her to go home, I told her to keep the game. "Catch Phrase it all yours." She was happy to have it and I was happy to get rid of it at last.

But Big Bore was right about giving the game a second life, and I admitted to him that I was wrong. From now on, nothing gets tossed without his full approval. The house diet has ended.