The Sound and the Fury, cont'd

It was about a year ago, again from Israel, that I wrote about my experiences playing a game called "Sound and Fury." This time, it was one of the last games we played, near the end of our stay, and one of the precious few we got to play with the whole family: Josh (who turned 2 in October), Zev (4), Reina (7), Maya (11), their parents (40), and us grands (66, 67).

Once again, the game was new for me - specifically the part about how much more deeply fun it was to play it with family - particularly with a relatively large family (relatively speaking), explicity with a family whose youngest member is still learning how to talk (albeit in two languages).

We did make up a new rule: If you wanted to pass (just in case you couldn't think of something silly enough to do - the pressure, you know), you could just say something (we had suggested something like "smeegledeebop," but "pass" worked, too), and then everybody would just do anything they felt like (complete with noise and movement). Oddly fun.

Point is, as a family game Sound and Fury is very oddly fun: easy enough for a 2-year-old to understand, fun enough to keep us all involved (we must've played it for at least 15 minutes, maybe 10), pointless enough to keep anybody from caring about having anything other than what we already had together.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith