Never Have I Ever

It's a sad day now that the cherished Richard Briggs has moved on to better places. And by better places I mean a small town in the middle of New Mexico. But hey, he is now in essence, the editor-in-chief of a regularly publishing newspaper. How many of you can say that was your first starting gig right out of college? Yeah, that's what I thought.

For full effect, download "Crazy Life" by Toad the Wet Sprocket, and play at maximum volume throughout the duration of this post.

For "The" Richard Briggs' farewell, a substantially large (no pun intended) group of individuals gathered at our casa to celebrate his life and enjoy one another's company. Games were played, jokes were made, apples were gathered and taken amongst ourselves, all the meanwhile some peculiar drunkard kept bellowing out the phrase, "More Wine". It was all good times, and then the activity of 'Never Have I Ever' was suggested.

Now kids, the game Never Have I Ever consists of holding out your hand and making a statement of something that you have never completed in your life before, i.e. "Never have I ever sniffed a large quantity of paint on a road trip". If someone in the circle of people competing has actually done that activity, they must then lower one of their fingers admitting guilt for that activity. Secrets come out, stories get told, and some of the wildest tactics of exposing one's enemies get brought to the table as everyone is attempting to be the last finger standing.

I will admit, there were some outlandish statements made in the game that we played.

D.B. "Never have I ever assisted in the delivering of a child."

Unnamed Source: "Never have I ever had a seizure in a parking lot."

Unnamed Source: "Never have I ever farted in public."

Of course, gender and/or sexual related statements can in fact lead to the raciness of a party, however for this session, we decided to eliminate those right from the start.

After a while, a trend started to emerge from the multiple games that we played. There were a handful of people who made it down to the last few rounds, with their fingers still waving to the rest of us who were forced to admit our guilt on past activities and/or transgressions. Those select few were the same four people every time. And had to go to great lengths to point out things that they had never done in their lives.

At first I felt a bit ashamed that I was not one of those select few that had made it down to the last few fingers. But then I realized that the reason myself and the majority of the rest of the people there had been cast out of the game was because we had lived our lives to its fullest. We had done so much more in our lives than we expected.

When someone said, "Never have I ever gone skinny dipping". You're absolutely right I did that, and it was one of the funniest nights of my high school career. Again, "Never have I ever punched a kitty?" Dang straight I have, that thing was eyeballing me up and down and deserved it. Or what about "Never have I ever walked around my house naked". Are you kidding me? That's every Saturday morning until 11:00. Don't act like you're not impressed (LTT).

The point is, even though there were a select few who triumphed at the game "Never have I ever" and were still holding up their fingers by the end of the night, honestly I wonder what kind of enjoyment they have truly experienced in their lives if all of these funny memories and activities and late-night stories were just words on paper to them, and not actual life events. In this case, at least I can say, "Never have I had the most boring life ever."

It's ok, you last four remaining, you can now put your fingers down on that one.