January 10th, 2019

You see before you, three vehicles.  A Tahoe, a New Yorker and some sort of Pontiac.  I'm not really a car person so that's about a much as I know.  Question:  What do they have in common?  I mean other than the fact that they are all automobiles.

Give up?  The names of the cars are all either towns, cities or states. Weirdly cool eh? 

I never thought about it before but when Tim and I were driving.....somewhere...not long ago, we were sitting quietly in the car, each of us lost in our own thoughts, and we came to a stop light.  It was an unusually long light.  The realization of how doggone long we were just sitting there  seemed to jar me out of my reverie and I began paying attention to what was going on in the real world around me.  At some point, I noticed that the vehicle ahead of us what a white truck and the name emblazoned across the back  in chrome was "Colorado".  That struck a chord with me because, A) we used to live in Colorado, B) I didn't realize that Chevy made a truck that they named Colorado and C) (with me there is almost always a C) Interesting. I wonder if there are any other vehicles  whose names are also the names of places?

I said as much to Tim.  He said, "Hmmm.  Well let me think a minute?"  He came up with Tahoe immediately so we had two right away.  Then I thought of the Pontiac and he returned with the old New Yorker.  Okay, game on!

We had to lay some ground rules pretty quickly because otherwise, I will start stretching things. I know me.  So according to the rules of the car game we just made up, the name had to be a town, a city or a state.  It could be as old or as new a model as we liked, but it had to be real, not made up.  The spelling could be different as long as the pronunciation was the same.  And no looking things up on my phone!  (Tim as driving so that was not an option for him and would have been cheating regardless)

It's a good thing we had some rules because Cadillac was my next thought. (Cadillac Mountain) but Tim shot that down quickly.  While it is a place, it's not a city, town or state. Dang!  But I redeemed myself with the AMC  Concord and Tim immediately came back with Chevy Malibu.

No matter what car or truck I thought of, Tim always thought of at least one more.  And by the way, I am seriously disappointed in the sheer volume of vehicles that have no names...just letters and numbers.  Really crappy for car games.

Still it turned out to be a fun, thinking kind of game and it got us all the rest of the way home.  And it had me looking out the window for inspiration, reading the names of cars as they drove by.  Not that those cars necessarily had a name that fit the rules of the game we just made up, but sometimes it was enough to remind me of another one.  

Playing car games is not an unusual endeavor for us on a longish drive.  It helps to pass the time.  But this was the first time that we made one up ourselves.  

We look for states of course, trying (and failing every single time) to find all fifty. Works best during a very long trip.  Extra points for other countries license plates.  At least one person has to keep track on paper because otherwise cheating will ensue.  For example:  "No really, I saw a Hawaii plate!  I did!  Remember, it was that red convertible!".  This while driving through Kansas.  In our car, apparently, there is no honour system that works.

Then there is the one we play where we make up phrases to match the letter combinations on license plates.  For instance, the letters on my Colorado license plate were LWP.  To remember it I assigned the phrase, "Lions With Pride".  I always remembered the letters of that plate (Never the numbers)  So we do that with random cars that go by. Tim always comes up with the funniest ones.

Tim and his friend Paul for awhile were playing a long distance game that Paul invented via emails. The goal of this game seemed to be connecting people and vehicles. Some of them were obvious, others were thinkers.  I don't mean what vehicle did they drive in real life, but what vehicle just naturally "belongs" with that person.  Like for example, the Chevy "Malibu" . The answer is obviously Barbie.   Even I got that one right. They played that game back and forth for months!

Which got me to thinking.  For every game that exists out there in the world, somebody had to be struck with the inspiration to create it.  They had to think it all the way through with the board, cards, game pieces and rules.  Wow!  What a cool job!

Especially the games that have withstood the test of time.  I get how somebody thought of Monopoly and Scrabble.  I even sort of see how Candyland was inspired.  Yahtzee and Bingo are games of chance that have a logical path backwards to their origins. But how on earth did somebody come up with the idea for Twister?  I am not sure I want to know.