Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

When we all got together for Christmas dinner, everyone was really quiet. I'm guessing people were a bit worn out from earlier in the day. My dad, of course, kept chirping along cheerfully, like he does. Mom didn't seem to notice much, either. But between us siblings and our partners, it was a subdued meal.

Afterwards, I had to run back over to Mom's to bring back the game Cranium. We hadn't been able to find it when we tried earlier. It turns out it never made it into the dining room with the rest of our stuff but was sitting in the back room near the door.

Back at Dad's, we chose up teams. Since it was an odd number of people, The Gryphon and I took Dad. He also happened to be sitting between us. Of course, after a few rounds, they requested that, since we had three people instead of two, that we'd select just two people to participate in any challenge.

Most of the time this worked out fine, but there were a few times we guessed the pairings wrong. I had to hum the song "Beat It" for Michael Jackson, and he didn't get it. I'm sure The Gryphon would have.

Another time, Dad had to act out the Energizer bunny. He was shuffling around the room frenetically, and all The Gryphon could manage was, "An epileptic baby?" But honestly, I don't know that I could have done any better.

Yet another time, I was acting out Martha Stewart. I acted like I was chopping up salary and said, "I just want to focus on my salad." I know The Gryphon would have got it, but Dad didn't. Since it was a Club Cranium, when all the teams participate, my brother and his wife won.

I was really impressed by how well my sister and her husband and my brother and his wife did as teams. You wouldn't believe how quickly they got things sometimes. My sister, for example, got her husband to guess Mae West by striking a sexy pose and pointing to her butt! I don't know how their brains work, but that gave him Mae West.

Another time, my brother's wife had to act out a tornado. All she did was spin around on her feet and he got it immediately.

When we commented on it, they said there's a magical amount of time you must be together as a couple before you basically are sharing a brain. My sister suggested it was about four years. The Gryphon and I, at two and a half years, have a ways to go.

Still, it was neck and neck the whole game. Finally, when we got to the end, someone drew a Club Cranium. Whoever won this would win the game, pretty much. Two out of the three of the teams only needed to get one more right.

This was a drawing challenge, and the hint was "thing." The Gryphon was drawing it, with me guessing. He drew a stick figure with a cigarette in his mouth and smoke coming out. "Smoker!" I guessed.

Then he drew someone standing next to him and circled him. "Nonsmoker!" I said.

For the coup de grace, he drew a line from the smoke, going into the second person's mouth and down into their chest. "Second hand smoke inhalation," I said.

"You got it!" I was as amazed as anybody. But just like when we helped my brother and his wife break in their game, this was our first time playing Cranium since we bought it for ourselves, and we won.

I must say, we had some good competition. I never could have imagined we would win. Everyone did really well and any one of them deserved to win.

The game employs different means of thinking. The categories are Data Head, which is a trivial or factual question. Then there's Star Performer, which involves either acting out something, charades or humming. Next is Word Worm, which involves linguistic challenges and word puzzles. Finally, there's Creative Cat, which involves drawing and sculpting. It's common knowledge that The Gryphon and I don't do well with Star Performer. We do reasonably well with Creative Cat and kick butt when it comes to Data Head and Word Worm.

Of course, taking on Dad as our third teammate didn't exactly round out our abilities, since his strengths are similar.

My brother and his wife always do well with Star Performer, possibly because both of them make multiple guesses, which is a good way to increase your chance of getting it right.

After the silent dinner, it was nice to see everyone active and having fun. That, after all, is one of the best things about Christmas.

There was a little lightheartedness and silliness Sunday night. My brother put the Santa hat on his son and paraded him around, saying, "Ho, ho, ho!" Then he put my nephew on his head and was calling himself Ali Baby-Head. It was pretty hilarious.

My sister was also taking silly pictures, of which I currently don't have copies. But people were a bit more relaxed and it was like a typical Wilson Christmas.

We stayed one last night, sleeping at Mom's, of course. In the morning, we had breakfast with her and then packed up our car. Then we all headed over to Dad's to spend some time with my siblings.

As it turned out, The Gryphon and I were the only ones leaving on Monday. My sister and her husband were staying one more night, and my brother and his family were staying until Thursday. But we couldn't avoid it, because The Gryphon had a lot of projects going at work and had to be back for them on Tuesday.

For lunch, my sister and her husband made us all potato pancakes from his family's recipe. They were different from what my Polish grandfather used to make, but very tasty. I added a sandwich to the pancake and made it a meal.

I did my 1 p.m. assignment at Dad's and then we hit the road. When we hugged my brother good-bye, he seemed disappointed. I promised that we'd come up to Vermont to visit in the spring, possibly carpooling with another family member.

Then we had a quick trip back to Mom's to pick up my dog, Una, and we were on our way. The traffic wasn't much worse than usual, actually. As we drove, the snow disappeared, from the white fields of Central Pennsylvania to the brown and green we'd left behind.

Back home, The Gryphon wears his new apron
and prepares to use his new mixing bowls.

More from Christmas 2005:

December 27, 2005 - Away in a Manger

December 28, 2005 - The First Noel

Copyright 2005 by Alyce Wilson

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