Several years ago, before my wife and I had children, a couple that we knew invited us and several other couples for an evening of games. This group of couples had gathered before for game night. Bunko was the game of choice on previous nights. One night the game of choice was Taboo. Taboo is a good game for larger groups of people. The play is simple. You divide into two teams. We played women against men. One person from a team draws cards with a word at the top they will try to get their teammates to say. There are other words at the bottom of the card that they cannot use as clues. For example, if the word was “Baseball”, you might not be able to use “sport,” “game,” “pastime,” “hitter” or “pitcher” as clues. A player from the other team watches the cards and presses a buzzer if the person giving the clues says one of the “taboo” words. There is a time limit for each player. The teams take turns and each player on each team takes a turn giving clues. Much of the fun of the game comes when a player is feeling the pressure of the time limit. Add to that if they ever say a taboo word, the buzzer seems to shake them up even more.
This night there were four couples playing. Most of us had gone to college together and had known each other for a long time. One of the couples wasn’t part of this original circle of friends. The man from the new couple (I will refer to him as Johnny) worked at a bank with the man that was hosting the party. He was a banker and my friend did computer work at the bank. We had gotten to know the new couple from previous game nights. We had been playing for a while and Johnny’s wife was ready to give clues. She turned up the first card for her turn and said “Oh! This one will be easy! Johnny is a…” My wife immediately shouted “Asshole!” Another woman shouted “Jerk!” As we laughed Johnny said, “Thanks a lot!” The word on the card was “banker”.
