The Dream Game
Eli is at Camp Half-Blood this week, which must be one of the greatest summer camps in the history of mankind. They create an elaborate extension of the Percy Jackson world and play through the story during the week of camp.It's all fantastic, really, even though it's in a state park and the temperatures outdoors are roughly one thousand degrees and have been for the last two months.
I know this camp is great because when Eli 10.0 gets home, he talks non-stop for an hour about what happened that day.
He mentioned something yesterday, though, that I thought would be fun for you guys as well.
It's something called "The Dream Game", and here's how it works. One or a group of people are supposed to create a dream (a story, really), and then the "subject" asks yes or no questions until they can figure out the content of the dream.
Yeah, I know, that doesn't sound so interesting.
Here's the twist: there is no dream. When the subject asks questions, if there is an "e" in the last word, then the answer to the question is "yes". Otherwise, the answer is "no".
This becomes kind of a fascinating Rorschach test for the subject, because they have to discover a dream based on the kinds of questions they ask. And it can take quite a while, too, with some amazing twists and turns.
An example: Eli and I did this with Gloria. At one point, she was stumped, and kept asking questions. Because the last words didn't contain an "e", we kept answering "no". She went through a list of the most obvious questions, but finally gave up on the obvious. Then she asked, "Was I hypnotized?"
I looked at Eli, he looked at me, and we said "YES!" The questions you wind up saying "yes" to are often relatively bizarre, which makes it even more fun.
So this was Gloria's dream: she was singing the Canadian national anthem (and singing well, please note) with four of Eli's hockey teammates (Ethan, Kelsey, Meg, Cole) in front of an audience at an arena.
And she was, of course, hypnotized.
That probably took 40 or 50 questions to reach, and it was tremendous fun the whole time, because we didn't know the story, either.
Eli tried it at camp, and here was his dream: he was working at H.E.B. (a grocery store) and sold cabbage to UT quarterback Garret Gilbert.
Hey, don't ask me. I just work here.
Oh, and if you do try this, send in the dream. That would be fun to share.
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