We are lucky.
Of course, the story, if told from then to now, is more involved than that. It always is. It always has to be.
Our summers look a lot like what summers used to look like; kids running free inside and out of the house, bedtime routines lax, one parent at home. This isn’t the norm anymore, hasn’t been for decades probably. Unfortunately. The shrinking middle class, the rise of materialism, the high cost of a life of leisure, and all of that business.
We’ve been lucky to have had exactly this arrangement for five summers now. There was planning, strategic and smart, but we cannot dismiss dumb luck. I need to be reminded of this fact from time to time, as my freelance writer bio says: I am one of the luckiest guys (and in turn, my girls two of the most fortunate of their variety). In the summer though, I require not a stitch of assistance to know all of this is truth. I need only rub my eyes open in the morning to catch a glimpse of my girls skipping down the hall with blue feather boas in the middle of the muggy air struggling to catch up. I need only to listen to them belting out sentences like “I was born in the forest and raised by trolls!”
Our days, after two weeks in, have been filled with Rainbow Looms, Dad & Me recycled art workshops, kindie rock dance parties, and blueberries. Thanks to our pals at Gamewright Games, our summer recently also became about Wigging Out with Omar, Beatrice Big Hair, George Washington, Her, Little Jimmy, Aunt Wendy, and Punk Rock Girl. Lemme explain.
Wig Out!
*****
You’ve heard them chatting, at the playground, around the water cooler, on Twitter. Parents of young children commonly knock their kids down a peg by bemoaning their attention span. I hate it. But I get it.
Kids often get a bad rap for having famously short attention spans, and maybe it’s mostly true, they are sometimes a scatterbrained lot. The rub is that I’ve seen parents in action (or inaction,) and, well, let’s just say that the easily distracted apple doesn’t exactly fall far from the tree. My daughters don’t exhibit such tendencies, although the Mouse has moments. I think the book culture we foster here is a reason why neither child has too much of an issue staying on task. Still, we do enjoy some quickies (hey now!) in the gaps between dinner and bed, and halftimes of the soccer matches daddy watches all year round.
Enter Wig Out!
The game mimics a brilliant summer; few rules, frantic movements, joyous shouting. The names I mentioned above are mostly true, as the characters in this card game do indeed have proper names but before we realized this, we assigned them monikers like “Her” and “Aunt Wendy,” George Washington” and “Punk Rock Girl.” Even after discovering the official roll call we still shout out their adopted names proudly, and loudly, as we slap them down in pairs onto the table. We have happily added the faces of Wig Out! to our summer 2013 collage in progress.
I could go on explaining how to play the card game, but how much fun is reading an instruction manual? Just know that Wig Out! is played very fast, is very fun, and has the ability to make the little gaps in your summertime activity calendar very terrific.
*OWTK received a copy of Wig Out! for review consideration. The opinions above are honest and unbiased, as always.
