Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Would you lend this car your favourite hair-band?

My daughter Jojo (aged 9) was bored, so she pulled this game out from the game shelf and presented it to me while I was lounging on the sofa trying to recover from the stifling summer heat.


“First to 5 points wins,” she reminded me as I flipped my player board to reset the little doors. This was a Cars 2 edition of “Guess Who?”, a birthday present from a thoughtful parent who wanted to “buy a game for that board-game-playing family that they’ll obviously love; have you seen how many games they’ve got in their bookcase!?”


You know, I don't think I've even watched Cars 2!
She started. “Is it a boy?”
“No, it’s not a boy, it’s a car,” I replied off-handedly in a heat-daze.
“No! I mean, is it a boy-car?”
“Um, yes.”


I stared at my player board. The assortment of smiley and grouchy faced cars stared back. I looked at a particularly untrustworthy-looking car and asked, “Would you lend this car your favourite hair-band?”
Jojo looked at me. “What?”
I repeated the question. “And don’t question the question. These are important questions.”
“I dunno - maybe? Okay, no!”


And so started the brilliance of this game when played with under-aged children.


“Would you let this car use your makeup if you had some?”
“If you were walking around in the dark and this car said ‘Hi!’ to you, would you be scared?”
“Comparing this car to Lightning McQueen and Francesco Bernoulli, who do you think is more handsome?”


Over 5 rounds, my daughter found out that I had chosen Prof Z, Tomber, Luigi, Mack and Lightning McQueen as my hidden identities.
Meanwhile, I found out that my daughter would let a boy use her makeup because it would be hilarious, won’t lend her favourite hair-band to anyone, even to a girl because she might break it, thinks large, friendly-looking trucks are scary in the dark, and considers Italians more handsome than Americans.


She won the game 5-0. I won the tip that I should be fending off any Italian-looking boys from the home in the future.