“You’re awful,” I said to my wife in the passenger seat.
“You’re boring,” she shot back.
“Cretin,” I said.
Ten minutes later we were both in tears.
“You,” I shouted, “are an awful, bitchy, crass, dead-eyed, elephant-eared, flappy-lipped, gout-ridden, horse-faced, idiotic, jackass of a keg-guzzling, low-browed, monkey-brained, ninny-hammered, oafish, pachydermal, quarter-ton, rank-odored, skanky, troll-footed, uncultured, vacuous, wasp-hearted, xenophobic, yellow-bellied zombie!”
My wife was pounding the dashboard. “Stop!” she cried. “I can’t breathe.” She wiped her eyes, still laughing. “How much farther?”
“Still 315 miles to Dodge City.”
“Another game?”
The Kansas miles rolled slowly by, each exactly like the previous.
May 13th, 2015 at 9:30 am
Ooooh! I wonder if my future wife would like to try this game. She’d win, of course…
May 13th, 2015 at 4:18 pm
You have to have a thick skin to play this one. 🙂
May 13th, 2015 at 9:36 am
Love it! I’m sure you had a blast writing out all those insults!
May 13th, 2015 at 4:17 pm
It was fun. I could have gotten a lot more descriptive, but I was trying to keep it PG. 🙂
May 13th, 2015 at 1:05 pm
I’ll try this next time my spouse gets sleepy in the car on a long ride 🙂 Fun story with a great twist.
May 13th, 2015 at 4:16 pm
Nothing like a good insult contest to stay awake. 🙂
May 13th, 2015 at 6:36 pm
Amazing vocabulary. lol
May 13th, 2015 at 7:28 pm
It’d be much harder to come up with it all on the fly too. 🙂
May 13th, 2015 at 10:44 pm
I think the husband won that round, huh? I know all about those long car rides. Anything is better than the long stretches of highway. This seems like a fun way to stretch the imagination. Great story!
May 13th, 2015 at 10:54 pm
I like long car rides, either riding or driving, but word games are fun (not that I’ve played this particular one) with so much time.
(I just realized that if he started, she should have finished, since she had the even letters. Maybe she passed on one of them. )
May 13th, 2015 at 10:56 pm
You haven’t played this one? Haha. She just let him win this one. 🙂
May 13th, 2015 at 10:57 pm
We’re going on a trip tomorrow, so I’ll let you know if we play this one. 🙂 I think I’ll have to let her win though.
May 13th, 2015 at 11:00 pm
She will know your strategies now. 🙂 Have fun! Have a safe trip.
May 13th, 2015 at 11:47 pm
What a build up, Doug! Although I must protest about the insult to my native state here. If the couple is still 315 miles from Dodge City, their definitely seeing more than cornfields (unless they haven’t gotten out of Nebraska yet). 😉
Thanks for the fun tale.
Cheers!
MG
May 14th, 2015 at 12:11 am
Doug? Close… 😉 Actually I have an uncle Doug Stewart.
Well, I haven’t been to Kansas (yet) but I’m sure it’s gorgeous. I love Iowa, but it tends to go on and on in quite the same manner for quite some time. I’ll make a judgment about Kansas when I get there.
May 14th, 2015 at 12:14 am
Oh GEEZ!!! Sorry about that, David. (This indicates that I made the right decision in choosing to read here and answer comments rather than finish proofreading a work project. You’re better humored about it than my clients would be.)
See you in Kansas soon!
May 14th, 2015 at 12:17 am
Yeah, I’m just teasing you, don’t worry. 🙂 We’re all set to take off tomorrow on our 3-state tour. Should be fun.
May 15th, 2015 at 5:40 am
So looking forward to it! 😉
May 14th, 2015 at 2:05 am
We play “I went to the shop and bought…” It’s just as challenging for the memory but less personal.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:44 pm
That’s another similar one. I grew up going on very long car trips, but I can’t think of any games like that we actually played. My sisters and I would make up stories sometimes.
May 14th, 2015 at 2:18 am
games that people play…
May 18th, 2015 at 9:43 pm
More controversial than the license plate game, at least. 🙂
May 14th, 2015 at 3:32 am
Seemed like Captain Haddock and family! 😀
May 18th, 2015 at 9:42 pm
Yeah, really. He’d be a natural at this sort of game, although he get excited and not put them in alphabetical order.
May 14th, 2015 at 4:51 am
Ha! Creative and fun.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:41 pm
Thanks. 🙂
May 14th, 2015 at 7:00 am
I would not dare to win a game like that.. Love how you drew humor from the picture.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:40 pm
Hmm, you may be right about winning. It might be the kind of game that even if you win, you lose.
May 14th, 2015 at 8:46 am
Forgot ’empty-headed malodorous pervert’. Reminds me of the Argument Sketch.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:39 pm
Yeah, that was a good one. Those guys were geniuses.
May 14th, 2015 at 11:32 am
how about “I went to the grocery store and I bought something orange…”
great story. Randy
May 14th, 2015 at 11:53 am
Haha! That’s a crazy game, but it seems they’re enjoying it. People do lots of crazy things to pass the time on long drives. It wouldn’t be good for me and my wife. We’re just not wired for it. Anyway, that’s an amazingly creative list of epitaphs. I think I might save it for other drivers next time I’m in rush-hour traffic. 😉
May 18th, 2015 at 9:38 pm
My wife and I are pretty weird, but I don’t know if we’d actually do this either. Maybe in the right mood. You totally should use some of these while drive. I can imagine some people that seem rather “pachydermal.”
May 19th, 2015 at 12:00 pm
I’ve seen “pachydermal” people in Walmart many times. 😉
May 19th, 2015 at 10:08 pm
Hmm, good point, although maybe you shouldn’t actually point. 🙂
May 15th, 2015 at 2:10 am
Hilarious! Totally surprising and very well done.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:34 pm
Thanks, Perry. Glad you liked it.
May 15th, 2015 at 5:41 am
Dear David,
I couldn’t imagine what would make him say those horrid things to his wife. I swallowed the hook and you reeled me in. 😀 Love it.
Shalom,
Rochelle
May 15th, 2015 at 5:42 am
PS This sounds more like I-35 through Iowa. Boooooooring.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:30 pm
We actually did take I-35 up for most of the way home. It did just go on and on, although I think all Interstates kind of look the same anyway, sacrificing personality for efficiency.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:32 pm
I wasn’t sure how I was going to present this, but when I thought of the line “we were both in tears” that clinched it, since I loved how it could be used both ways. This is the sort of fancy camera work you can get away with in a story but not in a video.
May 15th, 2015 at 8:37 am
Terrific! Another remedy for boredom.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:28 pm
Yep! Desperate times call for desperate measures.
May 15th, 2015 at 9:27 am
Thank god it’s a game. Some great vocab here.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:27 pm
Thanks, Patrick. I should have a vocabulary challenge to use a certain word every week. This week’s word is “ninny-hammered.” 🙂
May 15th, 2015 at 11:19 am
That sounds like a fun game! Good story. 🙂
May 18th, 2015 at 9:25 pm
Thanks! Maybe I’ll be brave enough to try actually playing it someday.
May 15th, 2015 at 12:25 pm
Better than singing 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, I suppose.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:25 pm
Less repetitive, perhaps, although both could lead to divorce if done wrong. 😉
May 15th, 2015 at 12:35 pm
I could definitely see them playing this game..the flat land goes on forever 😀
May 18th, 2015 at 9:24 pm
When the conversation runs out before the miles, this is what happens. 🙂
May 15th, 2015 at 12:57 pm
We’ve drove across Kansas, so I can relate. Unfortunately, my wife doesn’t have thick enough skin to play this game. On my last trip across Kansas, I’d pick points on the distant horizon and check mileage on the GPS. In a couple of places you could see as far as 4 miles.
A hilarious read. I’ll have to remember some of those names for future use.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:23 pm
I think I’ll try calling my wife a xenophobic, yellow-bellied zombie and see how it works out. Maybe it’ll become a pet name.
We actually drove across the northeastern part of Kansas this past weekend to go visit Marie Gail and the Duchess de Wisoff-Fields. It was a beautiful part of the country but not as ruler-flat as I was led to believe.
May 15th, 2015 at 1:36 pm
I would call this the Shakespearean name calling game.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:21 pm
Definitely in that vein, yes. Shakespeare would be a master at this type of thing.
May 19th, 2015 at 5:16 pm
My sister has a coffee mug covered with Shakespearean insults. These are very close.
May 19th, 2015 at 10:04 pm
That would be a cool mug. I’m sure Shakespeare was not a person you wanted mad at you. 🙂
May 15th, 2015 at 3:59 pm
Very amusing, Doug or David or Daniel.
AnElephant wonders why do you keep changing your name.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:20 pm
I answer to a lot of different names. As someone probably said once, I don’t care what you call me, just call me.
May 15th, 2015 at 4:05 pm
I don’t know the game, but it sure sounds like fun. The story is great, gave me a good laugh, too.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:19 pm
Thanks! I made up the game, but it’s similar to other games where you start with A and have to go all the way through the alphabet. My roommate and I would play such memory games when we were walking to breakfast in university.
May 16th, 2015 at 5:37 pm
How does he concentrate on his driving in the midst of all that hilarity? Very funny.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:16 pm
Good point. It hopefully was a section of the road with no other traffic, just in case. It would be a terrible thing if cause of death was silliness.
May 16th, 2015 at 8:38 pm
That was a hoot and a half! Very fun stuff!
May 18th, 2015 at 9:16 pm
🙂 Thanks, Dale. Glad you liked it.
May 17th, 2015 at 1:58 pm
Excellent! Loved the twist. It came right as I was expecting divorce papers to be served.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:15 pm
Hehe, not in this case. Glad you liked this. I just got back from a trip across part of Kansas, so it inspired this, although my wife and I didn’t try this game.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:23 pm
Haha! That game needs to be played between couples with really thick skin. 😀
May 18th, 2015 at 8:51 am
Nice twist at the end just when images of divorce lawyers were forming in the mind.
May 18th, 2015 at 9:11 pm
Yep, I was going for the misdirection there. 🙂
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