Forget This One...Please!

This past Saturday night we had dinner at my mother-in-law's house. Also in attendance was my cousin-in-law, whose husband is currently in Iraq, my niece (of questionable morals) and her boyfriend, and my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law has been separated for about two years, and the divorce was just finalized recently. He brought Sharon.

Sharon is 48. How do I know? Because she told me. In fact, she turned every conversation around to herself. And she talked incessantly. Here are the highlights of meeting Sharon:

*She talked continually about herself. At first I thought it was just nervousness. Then I realized it was her personality.

*She actually brought a photo album of herself with her two young boys, and made us all look at it. I'm amazed that she goes on these trips, since she only works as a substitute teacher. Perhaps they are paying subs much better now...

*She got excited to see that we had brought the game "Apples to Apples." However, she didn't like the way we played it.

For those of you who haven't played this fun game, everyone gets dealt 5 cards, each with a noun on it. The judge, who rotates, turns over a green card with an adjective on it. Each person selects a noun card that best fits the adjective, and gives it to the judge. The judge looks at all of the nouns, and chooses the noun card that he or she feels best fits the adjective. The winner keeps the green adjective card. The first player to collect 4 adjective cards wins.

We read in the rules that a player can try to convince the judge to pick a specific noun card. So half of the fun is telling the judge why your card is the best. When the girls and I did this, Sharon told us immediately that we couldn't do that.

"Yes we can," I replied. "We read it in the directions." I then read her the rule that stated this fact.

"You can try to convince the judge to choose a certain card," she said. "But you can't let the judge know which card is yours. Then the judge will play favoritism."

"But why would I try to convince the judge to pick someone else's card?" I asked, exasperated.

She continued to roll her eyes and use other not-so-subtle body language to let me know she was not pleased with how we were playing this game.

Later, the kids pointed out that we usually have more fun playing that game...

I did not enjoy myself much at all, either.