The Newly Wed Game

Friday night Brittany and I attended a fundraiser for the Carterville Christian Church (forever hereafter CCC) youth group. They are raising money to go to CIY Summer Conference and church camp this summer - seemed like worthy causes and the dinner sounded good.

When we signed up we were asked to participate in a version of "The Newly Wed Game" - for those of you who are really young and/or don't watch the game show network this was a fairly popular game show in the 80s (I think that's the right decade). The short version is that the couples playing are separated from one another, asked questions about their spouse and then have to try to give the same answer to the questions their spouse was asked (while they were out of the room).

There were 4 couples playing (including Robin and Jayme Sigars, who didn't know they would be participating). Time married ranged from 22 months, 2 days, 4 hours and 37 minutes (those hours and minutes matter when you're still counting in months) up to 37 years. Britt and I were at a distinct disadvantage having been married so much shorter a time than the others (or so we thought).

The first round went okay, I got 2 of 5 questions right and we were in contention. My lovely wife, however turns out to either be a superstar at this game or maybe I'm just so bloody predictable that anyone could guess how I'd answer questions. At any rate, she got either 3 or 4 of her 5 correct (I think it was 3). Because of a change in point values (from round 1 to round 2) and the other teams struggling in the second round we found ourselves ahead 40 - 20 - 15 - 5 (the elder and his wife were having a rough go). The final question was done "Final Jeopardy" style where you wagered your points however you wanted to (did I mention we just spent a week in Vegas?). Seeing that Robin and Jayme were the only ones that had a shot at us, we (I) decided we were going to wager 1 point (a tie resulted in a tie-breaker question and I decided to take this as a road game and go for the win in regulation).

Predictably all the other couples bet it all. The first two got their question right, but surprisingly Jayme wasn't able to figure out what Robin said in answer to the question, which meant our answer didn't matter...thankfully, because we missed it.

Final score was 39 - 30 - 10 - 0.

Why did I write this long blog just to brag. Well, 2 reasons.

1. This experience gave me some hope that perhaps we're more like other couples than I'd thought. It appears that time together doesn't automatically translate to knowing one another well. I don't feel so badly now about not always knowing my wife as well as I think I should.

2. One of the 2 prizes we received was a book that I'd never heard of and was shocked to be receiving from my local congregation. I was just incredibly thankful that none of our 6 parental personalities were present at this gathering. That would have been awkward!

For the record, we were the only couple to go with the non-mushy answer to the last question, which was "Complete the following sentence, 'A perfect wife is one who...'." The others were saying stuff like "loves me" and "cares for me". But Britt and I, we cut right to the heart of the matter. I went with "loves NASCAR." But she had the better answer with "gets along with the mother-in-law."