November Game Night in McCarthy
Photo by Marin Tulard on Unsplash
Hannah Rowland - CRR Staff
On November 18, there was a community, family friendly game night at Tony Zak’s home in McCarthy. A funny, homemade sign was posted at the mail shack a week before, encouraging people to fight cabin fever and join us for a night of fun.
Ten people came to game night and brought goodies to share around. Elizabeth Schafer showed up early to get the fire going, but the building was still a little chilly. So, as most Alaskans know how to do best, we stood around a warm stove and enjoyed sharing conversation of what our latest project is or a story of interest.
After some more mingling and eating, some of us started in a game of “Go Dig.” It was essentially “Go Fish” but the cards had dinosaurs on them, so we decided digging was better fitting than fishing in this situation.
After our exciting game of “Go Dig,” we decided to play Crazy 8’s. None of us remembered the rules, but the cute deck of vegetables and fruit with faces was made especially for the game so we looked them up. We found out it was essentially a simpler version of Uno, not too confusing.
The game started out quite competitive and promising, but it seemed that whenever someone only had one or two cards left, they would suddenly not be able to go and had to draw as many as five cards to be able to play.
As the game went on, some of us started to personify characters from the “Wizard of Oz.” Laurie kept on declaring that she didn’t have any hearts, so she must be the Tin Man. We talked about the other characters and in his big, burly voice Greg reminded us that the Lion was looking for Courage.
Well, as I said before, just about every time someone was about to win, they couldn’t play. The round just seemed to go on forever. Howard Mozen said he wondered what the Guiness book of records for the longest Crazy 8’s round is, when suddenly Greg ended the round. We then decided that we should probably end the game and move on to something else.
We again gathered back around the stove to warm up after playing the long game on the cold side of the room. I remembered I had brought the game “Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?” So, I got out some of the cards and started asking questions. The game of trivia was fun and interesting as various topics came up for conversation.
One topic of conversation was that Europe and Asia technically aren’t two different continents and should really be one continent together, the continent of Eurasia, but according to the 5th grader’s curriculum, Asia is its own continent.
The first math question we had was something like: “Round 338 to the nearest hundredth.” We were astounded that the question was so simple, but the math questions quickly became more challenging. David was fast with the math questions and even though I was the one with the answers, I was trying to think through them as well.
There was one question that involved a catfish and asked how many mammals were listed. David said that it was really a science and not a math question. One science question was, “How many canine teeth do humans have?” The answer is four, and then Elizabeth asked: “How many canine teeth does a dog have??”
Finally the building got warm enough to take your coat off and relax, but then it was time to wrap it up and go home for the night. We looked around, cleaned up and made sure to close the stove down so it would be safe, loaded up the cars, grabbed the generator and went home.
We arrived home at 8:30, not too late to get our little girls to bed at a good time. I got inside after I unloaded the car and David said, “We have a mermaid.” Ida was crawling around the cabin halfway out of her snowsuit.
Thank you to all who joined us for a fun night of games, potluck, hot apple cider, and good conversation. We had fun and look forward to doing it again!