Sunday, November 16, 2008


Every day at the pool (at both resorts) activity directors try to talk guests into playing Crazy Games (that's how they're listed on the schedule). I always pass. "No thanks. I'd rather just read or swim or drink."

Today, though, they were playing that game where you throw golf balls connected with rope at a little PVC pipe ladder (I only know it by joke names like Dangle Balls and Sling Sacs). I like that game. So I volunteered to play along with a young man and woman from Mexico City and two old women from Canada.

At first I worried I'd play "too well" and would have to start throwing the game if I got too far ahead (each night before the Entertainment Show, the winners of the Crazy Games are called up on stage to wave their certificates of achievement back and forth over their heads while the DJ plays 'We Are the Champions'). I didn't need to worry about winning, though, because I did genuinely badly for most of the game. I had a bit of a rally near the end but still came in second to the deeply tanned Canadian woman who always giggled and rasped, "blue balls" when handed the blue colored balls.

After about five or six rounds, the entertainment director made the game more Crazy by adding new rules like "throw with your eyes closed" or "throw under your leg." I was fine with these new rules. Why not? But I felt bad that I didn't find them as hilarious as the other people playing the game. Why is closing your eyes while throwing not funny to me? How was I the humorless one?

The final round involved spinning around three times before throwing. The catch was, though, that the entertainment director would pretend to get distracted while counting the number of spins. So... you could either keep spinning and spinning or spin three times and throw only to be playfully scolded for not going to three. A lose lose situation (or just good dumb fun, pretending on how you look at it). By the time it got to me I had watched four people contend with this. I decided to go with endless spinning, thinking, "I am trapped in someone else's joke."

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