Games People Play (Badly)

We're in a Camper and Nobody Asked
Sue and Lisa are recording from a camper, fresh off graduation season and still handing out $20 bills. Today's topic: games — and everything that can go wrong when you play them with the people you love.

Chapter 1 Cheaters, Quitters & the Guy Who Takes the Elevator Up Kilimanjaro
Every game table has a type — the cheater, the quitter, the ultra-competitive, the clueless one — and Sue and Lisa have met all of them. As retired teachers, they have strong feelings about tenacity, and a Kilimanjaro story that will tell you everything about a person in four seconds.

Chapter 2 Our Moms Said WHAT?!
From "Wiener liquor" in the backseat to a sweet grandma being called a lying whore mid-Bullsh#! game, their moms and grandmas in this episode steal every story. Turns out the funniest game moments almost always involve someone's mother who had no idea what she was signing up for.

Chapter 3 Weird Games You Need to Play Immediately
Sue and Lisa recommend Gartic Phone, Hues & Cues, Mrs. Mumbles, and the Quantum Leap same-word game — and they actually play one live on air. No equipment required, no losers, just a good crowd and low expectations.

Chapter 4 Fuzzy Duck, Dog Collars & Other Things That Should Not Be Legal
Quarters, Fuzzy Duck, and one electric dog collar incident that escalated faster than anyone planned. These are the games nobody teaches you — you just end up playing them at a party and hope everyone makes it to adulthood.

Chapter 5 Put Down Your Phone and Play Something
Sue and Lisa want your best game recommendations — especially anything that works across generations. Email podcastwedidntknow@gmail.com and find them on Buzzsprout, YouTube (with subtitles!), and Substack and wherever it is you find yourslf right now.

Transcript

We're in a Camper and Nobody Asked

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, I'm Lisa. And I'm Sue. After more than 35 years in the classroom, we've retired from teaching, but not from telling stories.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

These days, we're focused on growing older, but definitely not growing up. We still don't know what we didn't know. But you might pick up a life lesson or two between the laughs. We didn't know what we didn't know. Life laughed.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Hey Sue! Hey Lisa! It's been a minute. It's been many minutes, and we're sitting in my camper, and I can touch your face. Yeah, we're together and we're ready to podcast again. We were together because of all the graduations, and happy graduation to our students out there. There's a lot of you, even if you want to pretend you don't know who we are.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

We're here. Yay! So it was really fun coming to school.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

We got to see all the seniors. They're all so much taller than us now. So cute. And then we got to have cake and punch at some parties. That's and they got their $20 bill. Hey, you didn't invite me to your grad party. You just missed our on the We made the 20s fly. Oh it's raining 20s. Yeah, it's a beautiful day. We're in the camper, it's got great acoustics. What do you want to talk about?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

You know, I was thinking about playing games, just fun games, but also playing games with the elderly is very interesting. Or playing games with gravel kids. Well, it's kind of the same. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Life is a horseshoe. We've said that many times. So it's true that we are really good at leading games. I love to teach as a teacher. We made a lot of learning into games. We played Jeopardy games and brain break games. Yes. All those fun things. But let's focus on playing games with the elderly and the young. And there's different types of game players.

SPEAKER_01 1:45

That would be fun. We love categories. And then we have some really funny stories of funny games that maybe you'd like to try or funny things that have happened during games, especially drinking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Oh, yes. I just think flashed in my head. We should end this with some of the best games that you've probably never heard of. Yes. But you will now. Where do you want to start? Different kinds of game players. Okay, let's start

Cheaters, Quitters & the Guy Who Takes the Elevator Up Kilimanjaro

SPEAKER_00 2:09

with that. You got the cheaters. The cheaters. Okay. My brother, if you're listening out there, he admits to putting all those $100 bills in Monopoly. What's the highest number? Okay, $500. $500.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

He would hide them under the board. He would. Of course. Do you know that I'm not a cheater? Disclaimer. There's one game that I will cheat.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

So you're a cheater only in this.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Only in this one game. It's battleship. I'm telling you, I cannot not move the boats. Yeah. The ships. Wait, the kids would go at recess duty, like it was inside recess 7. They'd be like, Will you play a battleship with me? I'm like, yeah, but I probably might cheat. They always look at me like, Miss J.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

I I cannot not move. So you would move them if it was a hit, you would move it over. I would just move it a little bit. Were you really good at not making it clicking sound clear?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, you just kind of move them. Anyway, battleship, I just I'm a cheater.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Okay, I I will tell you that when my boys were little, I would cheat to let them win. So that but I didn't want them to not learn how to have tenacity and so on.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

But I just a hard one because when you're playing with little kids, you know that if you beat them, they're they're gonna cry or they're gonna feel bad or something like that. But if you always let them win, then I always ask the students, would you rather play checkers against somebody that you have beat every single time? And you know that every time you're gonna play them, you're gonna beat them. Or would you rather play against somebody that you've never won against? It was really interesting because the students usually said, I'd rather play against somebody I've never beat. Some people were like, Oh, I just want to win. But you know what? It's because the thrill of that chance that you might win, that's where you get the pride and everything.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

You do better if you're playing Scrabble against a real dum-dum, you're gonna have your cat, dog, bow wow. And same with tennis. If you play tennis with somebody who's amazing and you know you're not gonna even get a point, you will play better yourself. Exactly. This is fascinating because Lisa, we were in a staff development, and the question was you're training to climb Mount Kilimandero. You've been training for a year. You get to the start, you're excited, you're fit, you're ready to go, and you see there's an elevator. Do you take the elevator? And we had people who said, elevator. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

No, I think so.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

Those of you listening, if you lump yourself into the cheater group, well, shame on you. I only should on the one thing. Cheaters. Okay, that's good. Yeah, so there's the clueless player.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

The clueless. Yeah, that they don't know the rules and they try to play along, but you're having to constantly remind them or tell them.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

We're not necessarily saying they have a low IQ.

SPEAKER_01 4:36

No, but they're just unmotivated.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

They're just not listening. They're the ADHD.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Are you a person that they could just tell you the rules? Dad, yeah, let's go, let's go. You have to read them.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Just tell me what to do. Show me, let's go. Yeah, just I would rather start to play and just show me, show me, show me. Ultra competitive. Oh, that can be me.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Yeah, it depends on the game too, like with golf, and I love golf, but and I play it, but I hate golf. I love golf. But golf, I'm competitive with myself. Like, I'll be competitive, like I've got to keep doing it until I get it. Well, but I'm only competing against myself. That's the teacher's answer. But other things, it depends on perseverance because I want to get it done. I won't crawl over you to win. Games of chance.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Yeah. Like Yahtzee. I mean, come on. If you get a six, you get a six. If you're not, yeah. I don't cry about games. I don't cry over games. We could probably talk about how games have changed so much now that they've taken Battleship and made it a game on a computer. There's a game where you just have to take a power washer on dirty things and clean them. Not competitive. It's supposed to be for if you're anxious, but they also you can compete and do it faster and better, and then you get better tools. But I do prefer competing games that are really creative, fast thinking.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Yeah, so many people are just sitting on their phones and playing games and different things. And I like a good game once in a while, but yes. The quitter. Oh, the quitter. The quitter is the worst. Oh, my daughter McKenzie. So funny. She was a Kenzie. Kenzie Kenzie Kenzie. My son and I always had a running Monopoly game. So we'd have it on the floor and we'd start playing with McKenzie. But if she started to not win and stuff, she'd be like, I'm just done. And she'd just walk away because she likes to win. If she's winning, she's hanging in there and she's like, ooh, in your face, kind of thing. But if she's listening, she's like, yeah, I'm just done. But sometimes we'd play a game for a week it would take to get through. If we just play a little every night and stuff, but the quitter, you know, it's like, get back here.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Now, is that connected to the game board thrower? Is the quitter also the game board thrower? Well, you could be a violent quitter. I'm done with this horseport party pooper. Because I do find if you lose, say an election, and then you say there's cheating, but only cheating when the other person wins. I always say, oh, so-and-so just hit the checkerboard again. Because as a third-grade teacher, you can see. It's like, really? You only the people are cheating.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

You got the powder. There's a few people in my family. As soon as you're like, okay, it's game time. Bye bye. They're like, go find something to do because they just don't want to play any games. And you've got those people. But I I love a good game.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

I thought of one, it's the quiet, intelligent one. My father, very smart man, and you just thought he's there's no way he's gonna follow all these crazy rules in this game. And at the very end, he'd like put down that last card and be like, I won. You know, and it's like so awesome. It was awesome

Our Moms Said WHAT?!

SPEAKER_00 7:29

to watch.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

So funny times that we've played games with our parents.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

The problem is they have like, I wanna play Rami, I wanna play Kings Around the Corner, I wanna play Skip Bow. I'm like, could we learn a new game? And the teaching of a new game to an old brain can be a traumatic a funny game that we played.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

I played with my children, and it's a very inappropriate game. And my mom, my mom rode, she rode with us one time to Denver. Oh my love car games. Yeah, it was a car, a car ride. And so we were driving, and Skylar goes, Can we play the wiener game? Oh jeez. And my mom's like, What is that? And we're like, whenever you see a sign, you insert wiener either before or after or whatever, and it's just funny. You don't have to say every sign, just yeah, if it's a funny one, you just say it. And there's no point to the game. So we were driving along and there's a quick stop, and my daughter's like, quick wiener stop. So you say, Oh, you insert it. You insert it, and we were playing along like we wiener buffet or you know, wiener laundry or something. And so we were driving along and there was a liquor store. And my mom wasn't playing, she was just sitting and I'm driving, and my kids are just whipping them off and I'm whipping off. And we were kind of done with it, and we were just kind of like slowing down and nobody's saying anything. And all of a sudden, my mom goes, Wiener liquor. Did she even hear? She's just like wiener liquor, and we all just bust out, laughing, and she didn't really get it at first, you know, kind of clueless. She just kind of goes, Wiener liquor. She's like, Oh my goodness, and we just were laughing her asses up.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

My teeny grandma, she'd sit in the back and she's just as pleasant as can be, the most pleasant human being I've ever met. And she just be all happy, and all of a sudden she'd go, Deep Stimmel, Deep Stimmel. Like, is she having a stroke? What? She was reading signs backwards. What? Deep Stimmel is speed limit. She just loved to read stuff backwards. She would go, Tikes, tikes, exit. And and we would try to figure out what she was saying. It was super fun. Like she could say Albuquerque backwards. It was crazy. It's so weird. It was weird, but so fun. My family is really weird. So my mom, we were playing a game called Fish Bowl. If you'd ever played Fish Bowl, it's super fun. It's three rounds, and it's the same words in the bowl for all three rounds. Right. So the word was flag. And the first time around, somebody had the word flag, and they're able to say like taboo. So I would say, Okay, I've got the thing that billows in the breeze, it's red, white, and blue, and everybody yells out flag. And then you put it back in the bowl, and then the second time around, whoever gets flag has to act it out. And my mom stood up. We're all in a circle. She just stands up and then she grabs the big overstuffed pillow and she holds it in the air. And now remember, there's 30 words in the bowl. Right. And this is just one of them. And she's just angrily pointing at the pillow. She's just pointing and pointing and pointing. And we're like, pillow, fluff. And then, of course, she didn't get any words. And then when it was over, she goes, It was fluff. You guys are just trying to not let me win.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. We have a friend, she told the funniest story, and she gave her permission to tell this story. She's got this delightful mother, and she's got a good sense of humor, and she's sweet and kind to a fault. Right. And our friend has three other sisters. So there's four daughters. Four daughters when they decided to play the card game bullshit. And the mother is very soft-spoken, kind, honest. She's just a lovely person. The sisters were all drinking and they got a little loopy. And like I said, the mother has a good sense of humor, but she wasn't drinking or anything. They decided to play this game. When it was going around, it got to the mother, and she laid three cards down and she said, Three queens. And the one sister jumps up. I just can see her.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Points her fingers and says, Right in her face.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 11:35

To the sweet little sweet lady.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

And her mother goes, Oh my. And our friend said her sister, they're all just like laughing. She goes, Why would you bullshit our mother? And she didn't have any means, maybe. But I mean, why would you assume that she would have snuck another one in, or that she probably doesn't even know to do that? That's not in her character or nature to do that. And her sister, they were kind of laughing. She goes, What would make you bullshit her? And her sister goes, Well, look at her. She's just a lion whore. I can laughed really hard. And her mom's just like, oh, oh, oh. She painted. That is and the things we put our parents through sometimes. They want to be part of the group, but yet they don't know what they're going to do. It's a different generation. I will say though that they just want to go to bed. Right. So my mom's always had FOMO. Like she's so fear of missing out. So we decide to play this game utter nonsense. And it's kind of like Apples and Apps away. So everybody's got five cards and they have different sayings on them. And then you might flip a card, it might say pirate. And then everybody has to pick one of theirs and they read it as a pirate. Oh funny. And there's one person that's the it person, and then they decide who did it the best. And oh funny. It's really fun. And there's different ones like say it like Darth Vader or say it like Santa Claus. And my mom decided she was gonna play because she has fear of missing out. The first time it said speak like an old lady. Yeah. So when my mom read her sentence, she tried to sound like an old lady, but she sounded like her. I think that we oh my god, we laughed so hard. So then she was supposed to talk like a pirate or something. When she starts to read it out, trying to be a pirate, yeah, it sounded just like an old lady.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

So we were just laughing because her pirate is an old lady, her death bader is an old lady. Our baby.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

I am your father, Luke.

unknown 13:42

Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 13:42

So anytime we'd say something like grandma one, grandma one, we'd always play Euchre with my ex-husband grandparents. His parents, too. Euchre. Every time we'd get together, we'd always play, or even with his parents, we'd always play Euchre. But he had this grandmother, and whenever I played, she'd always say, I need you to sit here in this chair. And it was in front of like a curial cabinet, and there was a window there. So every time it's like they knew what was in my hand. And it took me forever to figure that out. And we'd always lose. And it was because she was with the light and the shining in the curial cabinet. She could see my hand. So she was cheating all those years, and they were playing. I'm like, I am terrible at Euchre. Like, I just can't win. Oh my gosh. And she's cheated all those years. Oh wow. Cheater and a liar. A cheater and a liar. My mom has her a couple of her friends and they come over and they play dominoes once a month or whatever. Yeah. One of the ladies couldn't come, and my mom's like, Will you sit in and play? And I'm like, I don't want to spend three hours with nine-year-olds.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

You know, 60-something year olds acting like eight-year-olds. Two eight-year-olds with their 30-year-old mothers. Why can't you find a sub? Get mommy another martini. Smoking or singing. Well, let's talk about games we love and recommend. So we play a lot of these drawing games. Oh, yeah, yeah. Those are fun. Gartic phone. G-A-R-T-I-C phone. Everybody that's listening, go play Gartic Phone. And this is a new one that we found where the first person just draws a doodle. Yep. The second person has to add on to the doodle. Those are fun for you. So you have to have a subscription to that though. I have no idea. I just have children who are willing to have subscriptions. Okay. Q's and Q's is a game board covered with color. Every color, and it's Roy G Biv. It's every color of blue you could imagine. And then you pick a card as the person in charge of trying to get everybody to put their little pawns on top of the color. I'm thinking. Is this an actual game? It's an actual game. It's a board game. And ironically, my husband's colorblind and he does extremely well. He always wins. Really? Because the subtleties of what he sees are so much more accurate. So, for instance, I would say daffodil. And then you get a second one. So I might say Golden Sunset. So they know it's more gold. You get points for being closer to the actual color that was on my card. So I don't know. I think it's because I grew up with playing hearts and oh no, I love thinking games. Right, right. It's just sometimes you have to play with the right audience. Right. The quantum leap game is fun where you both try to say the same word at the same time. So we're gonna try that one right now. And I'm sure a lot of you have heard of this one. So we're gonna say one, two, three. We're both gonna say the first word that we want to say. It can be any word. Okay. All right. One, two, three. Lettuce. Okay, so you said square, I said lettuce. Okay. Okay. One, two, three. Sandwich. Okay. You said salad. I said sandwich. Okay. Ready? Okay. One, two, three. BLT.

unknown 16:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Well that one, you have the better answer. Sometimes you'll get it so quickly. That's really fun. That's a fun one. Do you have another one? Can you think of another one? Drinking games. Oh.

unknown 16:45

Yes.

Fuzzy Duck, Dog Collars & Other Things That Should Not Be Legal

SPEAKER_00 16:46

Quarters.

SPEAKER_01 16:47

Quarter. Oh my gosh. I was so good at quarters. I used to be able to roll them off my nose and the quarter would bounce to go in.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Did you ever play the one where you would give them a pencil and you would make them draw a circle on paper with the quarter? Then you give it to them and they draw and they'd have a line on their nose.

SPEAKER_01 17:02

Oh no, that's me. You think about quarters though. You're all drinking and it's all in the same cup and it's all on the same quarter, and people are pulling it out of their mouth and putting it in. So gross. So gross.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

That's why we had good immunity in college. That's the other game was it was shaking the shake eyes. What was that drinking game? I don't remember. 21. That's what I think that's a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

One of my favorite drinking games was Mrs. Mumbles. We were having a girls' weekend. I said, Oh, we should play Mrs. Mumbles, and we had so much fun. Mrs. Mumbles is you cannot show your teeth. If you show your teeth, you're out. And then one person not showing your teeth, you're going, Sheo? Have you seen Mrs. Mumbles? I have nothing. Oh, I show my team. It's so funny. Another fun one is you remember playing the drinking game? It's um fuzzy duck. Oh, yeah, does he? You go, fuzzy duck, fuzzy duck. And then you're supposed to say, Does he? And then you say Ducky Fuzz. Ducky Fuzzy. Fuzzy Duck, Ducky Fuzz. But when you say it really fast, it comes out with does he. Does. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yeah, I remember that. We played that one in our circle time. It's cool. You did not. She just looks like this is a problem with us. You just look at me like she's so upset. I wasn't upset at all. Okay, I think it's time to talk about childhood games before we end today, Lisa.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Did I ever tell you what we did? My dad had a good sense of humor, but my sister and I would do really irritating little. It's a game. It was a game for us. But my dad worked so hard, and he just liked to watch a football game on Sunday. And we were so mean. We were laying on the couch, and my dad's watching football, and my sister and I were just kind of bored. And I was playing with silly putty, and we took a little piece of silly putty and we went on at the TV and we put a little dot. Silly putty? A little dot. And then we sat there because my dad didn't see us, and but it would show up like on a guy's butt or on his face and those. And we'd laugh hysterically. We'd laugh with that. So that's a game with no purpose. That's what we could call that part. The game with no purpose. So we were laughing and laughing. And then my sister, because she was a little older, made this little teeny silly putty penis.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

And only you knew it was a peen.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Although TVs were very small. Yeah, so my dad kind of drifted off and she pooped it there, and we'd laugh because it'd be like in their nose or in their garage. And we were just having so much fun. And I personally my dad woke up. He's like, What? What is that? Is that a fly? And we were like, Isn't that funny?

SPEAKER_00 19:22

We didn't have any screens.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

No, we didn't. And he's like, What is this? What is this? And he's like, girls, get out of here.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

That's how games is on purpose. My father would fall asleep on the couch with the big headphones on, and my brother would go, they're my little sisters. This game is called Harass the Baby of the Family. You as a baby family.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Oh, yeah, I was a baby.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Our stereo had a slider for the volume. Uh-huh. And my brother pretended to slide it up, but he didn't really do it on the volume. And then I immediately, because it's a game, I knew it was happening. So I went up to and my sister's watching and just smiling. And she just thought this was amazing. We put it up to full volume, and my dad didn't move a muscle. And you know it's coming. My sister walks right up boldly and just slides over. You can hear this marching music, and he just jumped up. Oh, my poor sister. I'd like to apologize for that game. Games with no purpose, my friend. Games with no purpose.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

You can tolerate shows. So it's like when we were playing it, my cousin was there too. And we're adults now, okay?

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Your cousin made it to adulthood.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

So we're all playing it. You'd have to put on your legs, you know, and see how you could do it. We were putting them different places on each other and going like oh oh, you know, and crank it up. One of my cousins put it on my other cousin's neck.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

That could probably kill him.

SPEAKER_01 20:40

He's like, no. Maybe he liked it. No, no, no. Well, that's a game. That's a game with no.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Childhood games. We played YMAX Bloff. We'd lost a lot of teeth.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

We had this game we made up. It was called Statue. I think it was my brother's way of beating up using us a little bit. He called it Statue. So my oldest sister and brother, they'd take us by the arms and they'd whip us around.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

How if you land, you have to be a statue. You have to be a statue.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

That was a game of the 60s. That was a game. It's a real game. I played it. We made it up. No, I played it on a statue. And then they'd come around and they'd try to buy you. You'd have to tell them what you were.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

We play this at school. And you could push their nose together. Yeah, yeah, and you'd have to say, I am. They'd even play statue tag or something.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

You know what? Yeah.

Put Down Your Phone and Play Something

SPEAKER_01 21:19

It's fun to play with people of all ages, but it's really fun to play with people that are clueless. Or people like our parents who are baby!

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Well, it's quite a game. You know, the other thing is if you can play a game while drinking or play a game while still sitting on the couch in a circle, that's the best game. So put your phones away and play some games, alright? I think it's time for us to ask our audience do you have a game that is a hit with old people, young people, we are family, group games? Yeah. Email, it's podcastwe didn't know at gmail.com. All one word, podcastwe didn't know. Make sure you like, subscribe. All that good stuff. Share. Yeah, sharing. We are now found on BuzzSprout, YouTube, Substack. So if you've got a game, we're talking games, especially to get you through the long car rides, the long plane rides of summer, let us know. Have fun, fine game. Have a great summer.

SPEAKER_01 22:15

Keep listening, don't give up on us. We got more good stuff to come. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 22:19

Bye, bye, bye, bye bye.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

You gotta get senior. Oh my gosh.

unknown 22:25

Bye, bye.