Life Is Funny: Dead Fish!
Monday, February 15, 2010 at 7:00AM MAD21 
By MAD21
About a month ago, I posted an article regarding what we do in our house to determine who goes first when we do things. Playing Rock, Paper, Scissors is a silly game that my girls love and are usually happy with the outcome.
That being said, there are a few times when things don't quite work out the way we plan. Our youngest has recently been choosing the same thing every time we play, something our oldest has picked up on. So needless to say, our youngest has been losing... a lot.
The other night when it came time to choose who was got to pray first, my youngest didn't want to participate. Since she was sitting on my lap, I said, "Here, I'll do it for you." And I grabbed her hand (which was limp), and played along with my oldest stating, "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!" Well, we were all laughing (i.e. trying to cheer our youngest/redirect her) because of her limp hand. And since, of course, it didn't work the first time we tried, we did it again. My oldest and I said, "Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"
At the time of the word, "Shoot," Daddy says, "Dead fish!!" Which made everyone fall down laughing. Then a conversation continued regarding who would win with "dead fish." Personally, the 'ick-factor' alone would make the dead fish win every time. However, Daddy determined that paper would wrap the dead fish, dead fish would lay on the rock, and well, we didn't know about the scissors.
Needless to say, it was interesting getting through prayer time that evening. It's a little hard to focus on talking to God when there are other people snickering and giggling the whole time. Hopefully, God got a good laugh out of it all, too.
My friend and fellow blogger Wendy at Weight..What? has a fun carnival at her blog called "Life is Funny." Every Monday we talk about something in life that we find funny. Be sure to go visit her blog to read her post along with links to other blogs who are participating.
Dead Fish, Fun, Kids, Life Is Funny in Life Is Funny
Reader Comments (5)
That's great. Love the story. Families need time like that!
There are actually many variants on rock paper scissors. Generally it is preferable to play in certain increments. The larger the total possible variants the more confusing it gets. This is why most people just play a simple 3 choice system. The next most common is a 5 choice game. A 4 choice doesn't actually work as well because you will get an option that is a trump of sorts.
If you had say rock, paper, scissors, dead fish, chicken, then you could map out the game like this
rock beats scissors and chicken (chicken chokes on rock), loses to paper and fish
paper beats rock and fish, loses to scissors and chicken (chicken poops on paper)
scissors beats paper and fish (scissors scale fish), and loses to rock and chicken
Fish beats rock and chicken loses to paper and scissors
Chicken beats paper and scissors, loses to rock and fish
There is actually a popular version called "rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock" Google it.
Matt- We try to have lots of times like this. Our girls are so much fun most of the time. You can only guess at the games they come up with on their own!
Nick- I have heard of the one with Spock. But I think the humor would be lost on our girls at this age. We've only been doing this game with them for a few months. I assumed it would take on a life of it's own eventually. I'm sure there will be a time when we start looking up all of the variations. Love your outline of the rules we could use with 'dead fish,' and the fact that you added 'chicken.' Which is very appropriate in our house (with my being ADHD and all...).
Thanks for the comments, guys.
Okay, what hand gesture do you make for dead fish? Yes, these are the things that keep me up at night.
Wendy- Think uncooperative kid. Limp hand. You grabbing at forearm and smacking it on other hand (which for the record was also limp). :o)