The Minister's Cat

My Works for Me Wednesday tip is a word game that has entertained my children (an me!) in waiting rooms and restaurants for years. Nothing like keeping their little minds occupied when the food takes so long to arrive that they have colored the little children's menu, all the napkins, and are starting to "paint" their fingernails with cheap crayons that NEVER COME OFF. Not that MY babies do that anymore, since my littlest Audrey has just turned 10 and is MUCH too old to paint her nails with crayons when she could be making little magic growing worms with her straw paper.

The rules to "The Minister's Cat" are simple. Each player takes turns describing the minister's cat with the most obscure adjective they can think of for each letter of the alphabet. You start with "A". The first person might say, "The minister's cat is an antagonistic cat." The next person (if she is quite a bit younger) might say, "The minister's cat is an angry cat." If everyone playing has about the same level of vocabulary skills, you can decide who wins that round by general consensus of who came up with the most obscure adjective. We have also played by just taking turns with the alphabet, for instance, the first person gets "A", the next person does "B", the third does "C", etc., and no one really wins or loses.

It takes a while to get to "Z", and by then the food has come, the nurse has called the patient in, or Dad has finished drooling over the new chainsaws in Home Depot, and the sweet little old lady at the next table over has stopped by to compliment you on how well behaved your children are. You smile and say "thank-you" while discreetly trying to cover evidence of wet straw paper worms with your napkin.

Check out a plethora of interesting tips at Rocks in my Dryer.