Party games

At kids’ parties, games make the event fun. So why don’t more adult parties have games? Maybe we’re too worried about cracking our facade of cool? But laughing and being goofy is better than any facade.
I decided that at our bonenkai, we’d have games. So last night, 16 normally serious grownups played Wink and Exchange.
Brad, our winker, killed me first and I did a dramatic scream-and-fall-to-floor death. It’s been a while since I’ve done that and I’m out of practice–I bounced my head off the marble floor. Ouch! Poor Brad had a hard time killing people; the reflections on his glasses obscured some of his winks. Eventually, he was found out by Zahid, who won a box of chocolates for his persipacity.
After dinner we played Exchange. I had purchased a lot of the gifts at the 100 yen shop–soap, pencils, a box of crackers–plus a few nicer things like gift certificates from Tower Records and a train pass. I had fun wrapping them. I must say that taken as a whole, they looked great!
The hot gift was a box wrapped in a pink foil bag tied at the top with a wide silver ribbon. It changed hands seven times. Inside? A box of Kleenex. There was a lot of laughter when everyone opened their gifts and saw what they had and figured out what they had traded away.
So since everyone seemed to have fun and to enjoy the games, I say more games at parties. When else do you get to play like that?