Due to popular vote (not mine I might add) National Decorate-Your-Potato-Head Day was cancelled. DYPH Day came to be as a homeschool assignment years ago to start a new tradition. DYPH Day was what Josh came up with. We chose the day before Thanksgiving as a way to spend some family fun together before the day of cooking and complaining "I'm Hungry, is dinner ready yet?" It was a successful holiday for many years and we enjoyed it much. But this year felt different. The one who started the tradition was gone and we were in need of some change anyway. In the end the powers that be decided against starting a new tradition. The final concensus was to make a tradition of no more tradition on that day. I went Christmas shopping and found Yatzee for $5.00. It had been a while since we had a full set of dice for a game of Yatzee so I bought it and asked the family if they would play. We taught the girls and off we went. Little did I know that my husband LOVES Yatzee.
I best enjoy those old good games that we played as kids. Tiddle D Winks, jacks, the original game of Battleship, Monopoly before Debit Cards, jump rope, double dutch, Yo-Yo, hop scotch. Before there was HALO there was Pong, Centipede, Pac Man. Back when we would lie in bed all day listening to what Josh used to refer to as those "Big Black CD's" AKA records, and when we paid extra for tv in color, when someone would stand by the tv holding bunny ears in place for less static while we watched our shows, and one tv in the house meant that my mom's Wheel Of Fortune trumped my 3's Company. Cartoons were early before school or on Saturday morning ONLY. No one questioned the violent Tom and Jerry who regularily chopped eachother up with knives, hit eachother with frying pans, cooked eachother on the stove, etc. or how the Road Runner ALWAYS blew up Wiley Coyote or sent him off cliffs to fall a hundred feet onto dry hard land in the shape of his body only for him to show up again after the break. And really you have no idea how old I was when I realized that there is almost NO talking on Tom and Jerry. Those things were novelties then. Cartoons, running to the corner market for a candy bar, going to the beach with friends. I remember what an outrage it was when the Simpsons first aired. How dare a cartoon (when We KNOW that cartoons are meant for kids) air on prime time and be so crude?? Bart's "Eat My Shorts" was an atrocity. No one texted all day to their friends, you vollied for the one phone in the house with the rest of your siblings and mom. And if you needed your privacy that was fine, you most likely had a phone cord that stretched around the entire house, or at least two or three rooms. Then when you got old enough you might get a phone in your room. Facebook? Myspace? Twitter? Ha. My mom would tell us to drag our butts off the couch and go knock on our friend's door to see if she could play. I don't have to even see my friends if I don't want to anymore. Or hear their voices. I have this weird sense of connection even though I have clearly lost personal touch.
Well I digress... We have played Yatzee a few times together since then. I keep it hidden upstairs so that no one decides they need dice and steals them away. Maybe a new tradition? Maybe not. But just some good old fashioned wholesome fun. How can we keep that?
