I spent all afternoon playing a game of my (tennis playing) nephew called "Bop-It!" It's a little bit similar to the game "Simon" that was around when I was a kid, but better and much more addictive. Surprisingly addictive given its apparent simplicity.
It looks a bit like a cross between a steering wheel and an infant's activity centre. There's a button like a car-horn in the middle with "Bop it!" written on it and then a wheel marked "Spin It!" on one corner, a handle labelled "Pull It!" on another, a cork shaped thing with "Twist It!" on a third corner and a little green thing shaped a bit like a nic-nak crisp, marked "Flick It!" (I said, flick it... oh you read it perfectly) on the other.
When you start the game some music plays and a slightly unclear American voice shouts out a command (either Bop, Twist, Pull, Spin or Flick It) and you then have to obey the command you've been given within the next second. If you succeed you get another command and the object of the game is to see how many times you can bop,twist, pull, spin and flick before you make a mistake or take too long to follow your instruction. I was competing against my youngest niece who is 13 and half French, so I figured I (a 37 year old and entirely English man) should defeat her. When was the last time the French beat the English at anything? You know aside from in all sport? Yes. I would win.
I know the game sounds a bit rubbish, childish even, but it was bizarrely fascinating. It should be easy, but somehow it manages to flummox you with depressing consistency. The instructions were entirely random, but even so your brain attempts to see patterns in the commands and even pre-empt them. Of course this leads to disaster and as such is a satire of the human brain's desire to find spiritual patterns in our random world, which will similarly embarrass you in the end. It's incredible how often one would clearly here the instruction to pull it and yet your hand would go to twist it. Which is also a parody of my sex life as it happens... ha ha ha, I am funny.
For much of the day England remained supreme and victorious and my chain of 84 correct moves looked unbeatable. But later France/England (and I presume that it must have been the English blood in my niece that made her competent) thrashed all comers with a score of 158. Will I never win?! By this stage I was drunk which made slightly hampered my attempts to regain my position of superiority, though the game took on a new level of fun that was denied to my sober teenage niece and I no longer cared about anything. Ah sweet alcohol - life's only constant.
So another humiliation heaped upon me by the younger generation to end the year on.
But let us remember the true meaning of Christmas is not about who is best at Bop-It! It's about some bloke being born or something. So let's think about that rather than about me being proven to be rubbish at something else.
