This Is Me--2024 A to Z Theme

My A to Z Themes in the past have covered a range of topics and for 2024 the theme is a personal retrospective that I call "I Coulda Been" which is in reference to my job and career arc over my lifetime. I'll be looking at all sorts of occupations that I have done or could have done. Maybe you've done some of these too!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

This Is Only A Game (How Do You Feel About That?)


           Yes, I am a sucker for games--certain games that is, like trivia related and word games.  I don't care too much for those internet games like Farmville.  I started a farm, but everytime I planted crops or accepted the animals people gave me, when I would go back to it the crops were all dead and the animals escaped. I guess if I'm going to devote time to farming I'd rather get a real farm and try to make an income from it.

            What I do enjoy is a few hours with friends or loved ones playing games and enjoying the fun and conversation of just being together.  Scrabble is always one of my favorites if I can find companions who are willing to play.  As a writer I suppose I am just naturally drawn to words.

          Then there is the psychologist part of me.  When I first started going to college my original major was psychology.  Something I used to enjoy was playing word association with my friends.  In case you're not familiar with this psychological testing process, the tester provides a word to the patient who must provide the first word that comes to their mind.  There is some significance to what they answer but the actual usefulness is probably questionable since the test is so dependent on a number different variables --probably vary similar to dream interpretation.  But it is interesting to see what the responses are and it does make a somewhat fun game to play with others.

           So my interest in word association being what it is, I was naturally drawn to a post I saw on Sol's blog,  The Window to My Sol .  This little blog exercise is called the Five Word Association Meme.  You may have seen it before since it has apparently been travelling the blog circuit for some time.  The premise is that you get five trigger words and respond with the first word that comes to mind.

         And now, thanks to Sol, here are the five words she gave me for the Five Word Association Meme, my responses, and my explanations as to why these came to mind first:


fierce:   warrior --- the word warrior just seemed to follow the description.  Fierce is a very graphic adjective and I immediately pictured a muscular warrior adorned in feathers and leather garb, brandishing a spear and baring his teeth in a fearsome manner.

snake:   Betty--  Betty is my wife and she is terrified of snakes.  If she sees a snake in a movie she hides her eyes until I assure her it's okay to look. I am my wife's protector and snakes are one of the things from which I provide her protection  I don't really like snakes that much, but I don't mind seeing them.  I could write pages about snakes since I have a lot of snake stories in my life.  Snakes are strange and fascinating animals and I have had an interest in them since childhood.

cook:     restaurant ---  I go to restaurants far too much-- it's one of the money-sucking vices that my wife and I have.  She doesn't like to cook and I don't cook as much as I used to when our kids lived at home.  I've always done most of the cooking in our household.  But much of the time I go out to eat because I'd just rather have someone else cook and clean up for me.

bliss:   fort ---okay, I know there's a Fort Bliss around El Paso, TX because I've seen the signs for it when I've passed through there.  I guess I could have thought of "marital bliss" but instead I thought of something militaristic.  What does that say about me?  Perhaps some of the most blissful times that my wife and I have had have been on our long trips we've taken.   We always have had so much fun and feel so happy driving across our beautiful United States.  And we get to eat in restaurants when we're travelling.

tomato:     sauce --- My mother makes some great spagetti sauce which requires canned tomatos, tomato sauce, and tomato paste with a number of other ingrediants.  I really like tomatos a lot, by themselves or as a part of something else.  But a good tomato sauce evokes some wonderful memories of childhood and my mother's home and pizza.

        There you go, you can make your analysis about me if you wish.  But I enjoyed that.  My mind was working to the point that I could have written lengthy essays about any of these words.  It's really a great prompt for an exercise in writing.

          So now it's your turn.  If you'd like to play, let me know in the comments and I will give you 5 word association memes for you to play with.    Or if you wish you can go to Sol's blog and ask her to give them to you --but please let her know that you came from my blog.  Either way it's fun to play and it's a worthwhile writing game that can stimulate your writing mind.  Have fun!

16 comments:

  1. Funny, but I was trying to find something else in my disorganized house yesterday, and I ran into our old Scrabble game. We haven't played it in years, although we used to do it a lot when we first got married. The closest we came to playing it again was when we got our first computer and became obsessed with online Scrabble. Now the DH and I have separate computers and we're both obsessed with Facebook - not that Farmville stuff, we don't have time for that.
    Morgan Mandel
    http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

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  2. I try to play board games a few nights a week. You are absolutely right about bringing family and friends together with games.

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  3. Love Scrabble but don't get to play often. Mostly we play dominoes and card games. I try not to play games on the computer because I don't know when to quit.

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  4. Morgan -- Have you ever tried the Pogo game "Tumblebees"? It's like a combination of Scrabble and Tetris. I usually play a couple rounds every day, but I have to monitor myself so I don't get carried away.

    Southpaw -- Unfortunately my wife doesn't like board games, but when I get together with my daughters and the rest of my family out come the board games and we have a grand out time playing, talking, and laughing.

    Carol -- I'm in the same boat that I usually don't have anybody to play Scrabble with--I told my wife she could even use Spanish words (English is her second language) but she still won't play. I tried playing two hands by myself during the holidays, but it just wasn't the same.

    Lee

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  5. I am a sucker for games too...I like mind boggling games, word games, and number games.

    Great job with the word association game...looks like you had fun and got to reveal a glimpse of your inside world. thanks for sharing and playing along :)

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  6. I like games, too. This Christmas, we got The Farming Game! Maybe it would be a more positive experience for you than Farmville! ;) I love it! It's kind of like Monopoly, but it's different, too. We've been having so much fun with it!

    Thanks for visiting my blog! :)

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  7. I find it interesting that out of your five words, only one associated word, Betty, was an opposition. Everything else directly corresponded.
    I am the same way with snakes. Just thinking about them makes me shudder. Like now. And there goes my afternoon. :-)

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  8. When I was a kid me and my three sibblings played board games all the time. Monopoloy is still my favorite of all time.

    Stephen Tremp

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  9. Hi There, Thanks for visiting my blog. So you used to live in Maryville???? It's a neat little town. We go through there often on our way to the Smokies.

    I love Scrabble --and many board games. My family has always participated in board games. Your word associations are interesting... I am working on a 'tag' (full of questions) for my blog tomorrow. Think these types of things tell folks alot about US.

    Please come back to my blog anytime. I have alot of posts from your former area of the country!!!!
    Betsy

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  10. I enjoy most games as well, although my family does NOT enjoy games :) I get most of my game joy from Jeoparday! This one sounds fun :)

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  11. When our daughters all come for a visit, we like to play Yatchee and also a card game called Phase Ten. Usually Scrabble is only if two others besides Abe and myself are here. We also have the new Monopoly Card Game, which is fun and goes a lot quicker then the board game.

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  12. Although Scrabble is my favorite, I used to enjoy Monopoly. It's been years since I've played. Christmas of 2008 we were playing Yahtzee, which we really had a good time with. My wife's family likes to play Loteria, which is similar to Bingo except it uses pictures. We always play for a quarter a round, but I usually lose a few bucks in the end.

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  13. My family and I love Scrabble. It replaces our snacking and lends us to some good old fashined family down time. Computer games are too impersonal. monopoly and Yatzee are among our favs. Anyone ever played a game called Po-Ke-No. You play for nickles. It is a cross between Poker and Keno.

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  14. Lee--I so love word games. When I was pregnant and on bed-rest my dear husband played with it almost daily. Since then he will barely play it. Thankfully, we have the tradition of buying at least one boardgame for Christmas each year. This year we got sequence. Our daughter didn't like it, but we did. :)

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  15. I've heard of Po-Ke-No but I've never played it. I've never heard of Sequence but the name makes it sound like it could have an intriguing concept.

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  16. Thanks for visiting my blog!
    Maybe it would be just as much fun to analyse the person providing the words, to see what deep dark secrets they inadvertently reveal.

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