BABY BOOMER YOUTH GAMES

An ideal mumbly peg jack knife via artofmanliness.com. Read that Art Of Manliness, a site you’ll like to visit for fun and knowledge. It looks really good.

Could Kids Today Benefit From The Game Of Stretch Or Mumbly Peg?

If Millennials and the rest of us want to meet on level ground, we must learn to share our games.

A game on television is the easy part. Click a station, then another, until you find a game you both want to watch.

No problem until the kids start explaining fantasy leagues. Makes you wonder if you’re watching the same game.

A baby boomer fantasy team might include Raquel Welch, Ali MacGraw, Christie Brinkley, Veruschka, Suzanne Somers, Ginger, and Mary Ann. Your kid’s fantasy team includes NFL dudes? Where did you go wrong?

Before you panic and sign your child into hetro-therapy, a scared-straight intervention, or a subscription to Playboy, take a moment. Then take another.

Fantasy sports aren’t a new gay fad, coming out party, or part of the gay agenda you hear about.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Fantasy sports are about building a team out of players from different teams and counting up their production each week. If your players score the most points, you’re a winner.

Sound fun?

If not, switch to video games. Kids love showing you things you’ve got no idea about. The thumbsticks, triggers, the D-Pads.

Now it gets harder.

If they like first person shooter games you’ll be forced to watch you kid die, again and again, over and over. That’s the part no one talks about. The easy part is your kids watching you die the same way.

That your deaths are no big deal to them doesn’t mean they want you dead, unless your last name is Menendez. Then they do want you dead.

There are more games than fantasy sports and video games but the rest all live in the shade thrown by those two monolithic entities.

Now it’s your turn, boomer. What’s your game? Checkers? Chess? GO? Boomer, please. It’s time for baby boomer youth games.

Go back before game boards and game pieces. Do you know where I’m headed?

The first game you want to share with a millennial is called Stretch. You play it with a knife.

It was too dangerous to play when they were young, but you owe it to both of you to play now. They’ll want to pass it down. Or not.

Goes like this:

GAME ONE: STRETCH.

Two of you face each other, one step apart, feet together. One of you holds a pocket knife with the blade open like a little spear.

Throw the knife near your opponent’s foot. If it sticks, they put their foot on the hole. Then they throw the knife near your foot. If it sticks, you move your foot and take your turn. You can see why this isn’t a game to play with just anyone.

You need to trust your opponent, trust being the biggest thing in all sports. Follow the rules or you won’t play anything.

You keep taking turns throwing and sticking the knife until one of you falls down, until one of you gets Stretched too far. That’s the loser.

The other way to end the game is sticking the knife in your opponents foot. That’s why you play with a screwdriver, a small screwdriver. And you wear heavy boots. No bare feet in Stretch.

GAME TWO: MUMBLY PEG.

With the same pocket knife you stopped playing Stretch with, keep the big blade straight and open the small blade halfway.

Rest the knife on the ground with the small blade and butt of the knife handle touching. The big blade ought to be sticking up at an angle.

With no one in front of you yell, “Clear Down Range,” and flip the knife away from you. You and your opponent inspect it.

If it sticks in the dirt big blade first you score 100 points.

Big blade and little blade stuck in the dirt scores seventy five.

Little blade only scores fifty, and if it lands in the same posture it was in before the flip you score twenty five points.

The Mumbly Peg winner is the first to 500.

If you’re the winner you find a little stick, a peg, and take two swings with the knife handle to nail it into the dirt. The first swing is eyes open; the second eyes closed.

After you bury the peg in the dirt your job is over. Now your opponent has to pull the peg out with their teeth, hence Mumbly Peg.

Again, trust it of greatest importance. To respect baby boomer youth games you have to give your best effort. You need to stretch it out, then dig it out.

That peg has to come out or your sterling reputation switches to quitter. And no one likes a quitter.

(False teeth allowed.)