Yellow Fellow

My son is a genius.  If you know him, you know this to be true. He is smart, creative, sarcastic, snarky, rude and foul.  See?  Perfection in a 12-year-old package.

He created a game last summer, and it keeps growing. In fact, it has spanned AT LEAST two other families (Umm, can you say, LEGACY?) and. AND.  It has managed to annoy the absolute crap out of at least one of those families.

I will describe the game:

It is called Yellow Fellow. I know, you may have heard variations of this game, I know I played something similar in my youth. But, he made it way more fun, and irritating!

When you are driving around, you call out vehicles. Here are the vehicles, and what you call out:

Yellow car: Yellow fellow (duh)
VW bug: Slug bug (but no hitting, mommy is a wussy)

I know, ya heard it all before.  But, after careful consideration, he has added some new items to the list:

Yellow VW bug: Skittle

And there was a concession for Princess, who can't tell a VW Bug from a PT Cruiser........

Yellow PT Cruiser (I have seen ONE, and it was U-G-L-Y): M 'n M

See? Brilliant.  And, the brilliant part is, these childrens' minds are so focused on this godforsaken game, they can be mid-conversation, then all of a sudden, SLUGBUG!  SKITTLE! .....and then he gave me a picture of.....YELLOW FELLOW!  I can't keep up!

Then, Princess offered up, "And, if we see a car that is half VW, half PT Cruiser, it's a P Bug T!  No, a PT Bug!  No, I like P bug T.  Yep, a P bug T."

Monkey Boy was, for once, smart enough to not point out the statistical possibility of this-for which I thanked him later.



Fast-forward a few months. He and his cousins are all playing, the kids of some friends are playing (sorry, Sally!).  It's viral.  (Yes, two other families, maybe three, is "viral".  No, I don't care if you disagree.) At times, the kids try to include signs, the lines down the highway, anything to make the other child feel slow, incompetent, and like a big Yellow Fellow loser. We had stopped much of it, adding to the rules:

• It must move, be moving, or be capable of moving (boats, bicycles, trucks, scooters, cars)
• You don't HAVE to call out what it is (yellow fellow, taxi, or yellow fellow bus) but it is helpful to prevent repeats-we may have to revisit this one, and get firmer on the ruling
• It must require fuel of some kind, whether gas, diesel solar, or human

This helped to get rid of signs, marquees, paint on the road, etc.

Then one day, we were walking to the bike shop.

Princess: Yellow fellow car, yellow fellow truck
Monkey Boy: yellow fellow taxi, yellow fellow sign
P: Nooooo.  No signs! Mom said.
MB:Fine. Yellow fellow car, right there.

::::::a moment or two go by::::::

MB: Yellow fellow, sun.
P: That's not fair, it's not a car,
MB: Well it moves, and runs on gas.  How ya like me now?

P: (Thinks for a moment)Well...... so do you.


They both had their points.