we tried to take “the nieces” to alligator bayou yesterday for a real louisiana experience. unfortunately, it stormed the whole time we were there and they had to cancel that evening’s boat ride through alligator infested waters. of course, we spent an hour waiting before they actually canceled the ride. during that time we entertained ourselves as best we could. me and noah played “slaps” for an hour.
“slaps” for those of you who don’t know the game is an old school yard game. there are two versions that i now of. in the first version you face your opponent and place your hands face down on his/her upward facing hands. your opponent then tries to slap your hands while you are trying to move them away from being hit. the problem is that you can’t jerk your hands away until he/she actually tries to slap your hands. if you do jerk your hands away three times before a slap actually occurs then your opponent gets a free slap. the second version works with your opponent holding his/her hands together pointing at you. you hands begin against your thighs. you then try to slap your opponent’s hands while they try to remove their hands from danger. the three false jerk rule applies here also.
the beauty of this evening was that i was playing “slaps” against an eight year old. i don’t often have a definite advantage in life but i did in this game. my advantage was that noah had never played “slaps” before. i was older, wiser, and better at “slaps” than my eight year old son and because of that greater level of skill i decided to make him pay for all the times he had abused me. all the times he “accidentally” hit me in places that didn’t need to be hit. all the times he stole my bacon while i wasn’t looking and then tried to play the “i’m your cute little son” routine. oh yeah, he was going to pay. so we played “slaps” and i was going to pop him hard. i had decided that even when he started crying “dad, i don’t want to play anymore” we would continue playing. i would just kept screaming “this is good for you – it will toughen you up!” i was a man on a mission – to beat my eight year old son at slaps. pay back is a pain and noah was about to learn this.
unfortunately, noah stomped me like a stray grape and the backs of my hands are still sore this morning.
still, it was about as good of a way to waster an hour as i could think of.
the above photo is of the pet nutria they have a alligator bayou. he basically sits around and eats dum dums all the time. that was about as much animal excitement as we could get from the soaked evening.
