Best of The Zombieslayer

The Greatest Game Ever - Spoons

June 29 , 2005

Okay, I have a confession to make. When you're playing, don't just try to get four of a kind. Your odds for getting four of a kind are against you. It's better to keep one eye on the spoons and one eye on your cards. That's exactly why Savage lost, he kept trying to get four of a kind instead of watching the spoons.

Whoops, lost ya. You're thinking, "what in the blazes is The Zombieslayer talking about?"

Spoons, baby! The greatest game ever invented. Greater than chess, greater than checkers, greater than Monopoly, greater than even poker.

If you don't know how to play, I'll tell you. You need at least four people, but five is more ideal and eight is too many. So ideally, you want from five to seven players. Let's just say there are five players. So you take a deck of cards and take only the Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and tens from the deck. The rest of the cards you set aside.

Now take four spoons. You want to be short one spoon so since there are five players, there should only be four spoons.

You shuffle the cards and deal them out. Anyone who goes to pick up their cards before all of them are dealt gets swatted hard on the back of the hand. Naughty naughty. They must learn to wait until the dealer finishes dealing.

After all the cards are dealt, you pass one card face down to your left. You keep passing one card to your left until someone gets four of a kind. When someone gets four of a kind, they grab a spoon. If you see someone grab a spoon, you better grab one before everyone else does. Whomever fails to grab a spoon gets a letter by their nickname. Real names are forbidden.

When someone gets enough letters to form the word, they lose and they shall be punished according to the punishment you decided before the game began. You could choose any word, depending on how long you want the game to be. "Loser" would be a short game. "Buttmunch" a longer game (yes, the Zombieslayers liked the Beavis and Butt-head show).

We have had a multitude of punishments in the past. We have done everything from the loser had to wear two different colored shoes to school the next day to the loser had to ding-dong doorbell ditch the scariest house on the block. When we got older, we played spoons as a truth or dare game and in college, it became a drinking game. I have heard some swingers play it as a swinging game (no, the Zombieslayers are not swingers, I'm just repeating what I heard).

There have been spoon injuries. One of my cousins had long nails and accidently cut Papa Zombieslayer's best friend with them while they both reached for the same spoon. To this day, there is blood on that card deck. Ah, the fond memories.

Being ticklish is not a good thing. You will have moments when fighting for a spoon takes more than thirty seconds. Everyone else will back off, knowing to give them space. One will resort to tickling the other until the other releases the spoon.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu comes in very handy in spoons. Barring you're not being tickled, you will know which way the arm doesn't bend and that knowledge comes in very handy when trying to get your friend to relinquish his hold on the spoon you are both fighting for.

The Zombieslayer has never lost. Ever. My secret? Keep an eye on the spoons. Your hand doesn't matter. Odds are someone will get four of a kind before you do anyways. It's simple statistics.

So when the zombies come and the compound is secure; when our supplies are fine, our weapons are at the ready, and it's someone else's turn to be the sentry, our biggest enemy will be boredom. Anyone up for a game of spoons? The word is "stinky" and the punishment is one song of karaoke, winner's choice.

Shootin' Political Correctness in the head since May 2005. If you're soft skinned or weak at heart, you might want to try elsewhere.