Recently, my kid brother and I have taken to play­ing word games when we’re bored (and get­ting along). The rules of the games are that you have to pick a cat­e­gory (ani­mals, places, food, etc), and then one per­son calls out an item in that cat­e­gory. The next per­son, then, has to call out another item that begins with the last let­ter of the just-called item. For exam­ple: if he were to call out ”dog” I would call out “gorilla” and then he could say “anteater,” and so on and so forth. The game is over when no one can think of any­thing else at all, or when every­one gets bored (which, in our case, is the… case).

The thing about this game, at least when it comes to my brother and I, is that you never know when it’s going to start, who’s going to ini­ti­ate it, or even what the cat­e­gory of the round is. It hap­pens sud­denly, and before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour yelling out names and words that you, on a day-to-day basis, never would have thought of. Like nematode.

Last night, I was play­ing with the Bam­boo Tablet I recently got. I’m not much of an artist to begin with, and I was just play­ing around, really. My brother came into my room to hang out, and started ask­ing me to draw things. Mostly, I only played along to amuse him at first, because I had other things I wanted to do.

Then, sud­denly, my brother yells out, “ALBATROSS!”

I freeze. I turn my head. I look at him, like I often do, as if he’s lost his mind, which he often has. He looks at me, expec­tant, and I look back at my lap­top, and the tablet pen in my hand.

Oh, I tell myself. It is on.

This was our game last night.

(click to enlarge)

A few notes:

- Because of a child­hood obses­sion with The Res­cuers Down Under, and hav­ing read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I’ve hap­pily led my life believ­ing that Alba­trosses were mon­s­ter­ous birds that tow­ered over every­thing. This is why the Alba­tross is the biggest, because I still like to pre­tend that they’re as big as I remem­ber them being in my imag­i­na­tion.
– I spelled Nema­tode wrong. As well as Egret and Nar­whal. When it’s mid­night and you’re laugh­ing too hard to pay atten­tion, these things hap­pen. Also, the Narwhal’s horn is that black line going towards the Tiger’s tail.
– My brother cheated. When I gave him Lynx, he gave me Xenobee­tle, and a whole his­tory to make me believe him, and I did, but Google tells me oth­er­wise.
– Koalas are vio­lent, dirty things, and that is why mine  is not happy.
– I have no excuse for the Rooster. My brother was up in arms about it the whole night.
– I also don’t know why the Ele­phant is in a box, my brother just said it. I think he under­stood that it wouldn’t fit on the can­vas I had open. That, or he was cater­ing to my love of Ele­phants and my love of The Lit­tle Prince. What a sweetheart.