Jenny prized togetherness with her family and friends above all else. Everyone has a shortlist of favorite ways to get together. Maybe it involves going out for drinks. Or, maybe it's playing or watching sports. For Jenny, she loved to get together by going out to eat, going for a walk and playing games.
"The object of the game", the old joke goes, "is to win". However, for Jenny it was purely to have fun together. Beating somebody else at a game never appealed to Jenny. (Although she did enjoy razzing her kids once in a while.) So, here's a list of games Jenny enjoyed with friends and family.
Cards--Spades, Contract Bridge, memory games. I played far too many hours of Spades and Bridge when I was in college (maybe about 1000 hours my senior year alone). When I introduced the games to Jenny, she liked them for the teamwork involved. Each game requires exactly four players, who play together in teams of two. If unfamiliar with either game, start with Spades, which is a great introduction to Bridge. On nights we were going to watch TV as a family, Jenny would often ask that we play Spades first so we can interact with each other before staring at a screen.
In the photo below, Jenny is playing a memory game with a specialized deck of cards showing images (MLB teams in this case). The deck is made sets of two cards with identical images. The players flip cards randomly at first then put the cards face down. They need to remember what's on the face of the card and the card's location so they can be matched at a later turn. The winner is the one who can make the most pairs.
Telestrations: This game doesn't have a winner or a loser and is great for laughs. The concept is this: A player starts with a secret phrase, like "Eyeing the clock" known only to that player. They then have to draw a picture that illustrates that phrase. (See drawing in the photo below.) The pad is then passed to the next player, who then has to interpret that drawing and write down what they think original phrase is. The process is repeated up to three times, depending on the number of players.
As I write this, I can practically hear Jenny laughing as she sees how far off the final phrase is from the original. (And, there's no better sound than Jenny's laugh.)
Escape rooms: Jenny was always an outstanding teammate to have in an escape room challenge. So calm--always as cool and collected with 30 seconds left as she was with 30 minutes. If we can make a recommendation, we really enjoyed Beat the Lock in San Jose. In the photo below we see Jenny at San Mateo's Ryptic Room Escape--also a great experience--trying to help her kids, brother and his family solve a puzzle.
Trivia: Jenny loved trivia and once auditioned to compete on Jeopardy. Teaming up at the dinner table to play Jeopardy on Alexa was a favorite nightly family activity. Jenny also put together trivia teams to compete in contests here in the Bay Area. Back in 2001, for example, she organized and captained a team that won the annual Silicon Valley Aloha Challenge. That's her second from the right in the photo below. I held the grand prize over my head--a box of sake.
Side note: The inspiration for the title of this post came from "Games People Play", my all-time favorite Vegas song, sung by Mel Torme. It was introduced to me by Jenny and can be found here.
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