Grandparent Games

My O'Brien grandparents are Rook players. My whole life a visit to the grandparents (which meant a vacation at the grandparents, since they always lived far away, until I moved in with them, of course) was accompanied by Rook playing. It's a fun game, and my grandparents make it more fun that usual, being the awesome and hilarious people that they are. Grandma loves to take the bid. Grandpa has fun sayings for just about everything. If a player calls out that trumps are black (or red on occasion) he replies "the color of my true love's hair." If trumps are green or yellow he might instead say "the color of my true love's teeth." Score sheets are often posted on the refrigerator (there are two up right now), and Grandma has been known to make long distance and awkwardly-timed phone calls to share a particularly good score.

My Gray grandparents, on the other hand, are Dominos and Trionimos players. As a kid they used to take my brother and I camping for several days at a time during the summers. At night we'd sit around the table in the camper with the kerosene lantern and play games. Granddad also created a game we played outside called "Washers." He had two short tubes of wide PVC pipe that he put in the ground after digging a little hole, and we would stand back and toss large flat washers that he'd painted into the holes, sort of like Horseshoes. Every time someone took a turn he'd pull out his little pad of paper from his shirt pocket and mark down the score. I think he usually won, too.