Simple pleasures

I learned a new game the other day. While at some friends’ house for dinner one of their houseguests, Matt, brought us outside to show us his new game. It looked simple enough. There were several Americans, a Scotsman, and a Northern Irishman present for this event.

Matt had taken two small pieces of plywood about 2.5 feet by 3 feet and cut a hole about 6 inches across near one end. He added legs to the end with the hole near it to make it stand at a slight angle. It looked like maybe he had slightly polished the top surface. Each board was positioned about 30 feet from the other, something akin to the stakes for playing horseshoes where you throw from one end to the other.

He handed us each 4 bean bags of medium size and explained that we were to stand next to one of the boards and try to toss the bean bags down towards the other board and try to do it in such a way as to make the bean bags stay on the surface of the board or even better to drop down into the hole cut in the surface of the board. A bean bag on the board was worth 1 point, and one that went into the hole was worth 3 points. Bean bags that hit and skipped off were worth nothing as were ones that fell onto the ground.

As each player threw their bags they could knock another players bean bags off the board, thereby effectively taking points away from them, or knock another players bean bag down into the hole, effectively giving them more points, etc.

This turned out to be much harder than it looks. Without sufficient height on the toss the bean bag would simply skip off the other end of the board if you were lucky enough to even hit it. Too much height without enough distance would result in the bean bag landing on the ground in front of the target. With some practice you could find your range and trajectory and eventually start scoring points.

We were all having some simple, clean fun and a lot of laughs. Of course eventually we started getting slightly bored with it all and began looking for ways to spice up the fun a little. Throwing the bags with your eyes closed certainly added an element of difficulty, as did throwing them grenade-style or behind your back, etc. This led fairly quickly into a free-for-all with bean bags being tossed in all manner of ways, and more than a few people being conked on the head or other parts by flying bean bags.

I was quite amazed at how something so simple could bring out so many laughs from such a diverse group of people.

What have you done lately that involved taking pleasure in something so simple?