categories

On Saturday evening I went to a pool party for my friend Curtis. It was his birthday yesterday and I hadn't been swimming all summer so I suggested we plan a gathering at his apartment's pool but then our friend Scott offered his parents' - even better! It felt so good to dive into the water in my new swimsuit that I got last week for 80 percent off its original price and swim around like a fishy. Only seven of us actually got into the pool, so we felt it was our duty to have cannonball contests and get the wieners wet who didn't want to dip. After swimming around and goofing off I suggested that we play 'Categories', which I loved playing when I was a kid at the Storrs' pool. Some of them had never played before (gasp!) so I had to explain the rules. The person who's it picks a category, such as 'colors', and then plugs their ears while everyone else picks a color for themselves as well as a 'family' color. Once that's decided the 'it' person sits on the diving board with their back to the pool and calls out colors. When your color is called you have to swim to the other side of the pool without them hearing you and diving in to tag you. If he or she calls the family color then everyone has to go. If the person who's 'it' turns around after calling a color and no one is going, then they have to scoot up on the diving board, further from the water as a penalty. Anyways so everyone agreed to play and we nominated an 'it' to pick a category. As a kid with all of my Storrs pals we chose categories such as Disney movies, cereals, farm animals, colors, junk foods, etc. I must say that it is much more entertaining when playing with peers in their early to mid-twenties. Here are a few of the categories we used:

• 'Lost' characters
• Pizza toppings
• 'Lord of the Rings' characters
• Latter-day prophets
• Gale Beggy quotes
• Types of cancer

Some of the suggested categories that we did not use (all offered by the one and only Ben P):

• Goldmine era diseases
• Black US presidents
• People in this pool
• Wheelchair bound astrophysicists

This may be an "I guess you had to be there" story, but I can't help but laugh now, thinking about his suggestions and the manner in which he offered them so I just wanted to remember that moment by immortalizing it in a blog post. I <3 my nerdy witty guy friends!