Guilty Pleasures -- Car games


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Guilty Pleasures loves road trips, and thus loves car games.

A favorite is the "cow game," in which the winner is the first person in the car to see a cow and yell, "Cow game!" That one, as you can imagine, is over quickly around here.

Or there's the "in your pants game," where that phrase is added to various highway signs, such as "emergency parking only -- in your pants." (That one, as you can imagine, can be extremely, and hilariously, low-brow, especially with Guilty Pleasures' friends.)

But the one that Guilty Pleasures truly loves and has played the longest is "Zip." Anyone who has ever had the delightful opportunity to be trapped with Guilty Pleasures in the car -- such as last weekend's trip to the Leavenworth International Accordion Celebration -- will be forced to play.

Invented by a former flame's great-grandfather, "It began with different point values applied to different types of horses, and points were lost when you passed a cemetery," explains Former Flame. "Over the years other objects were added as having point values, like old-school, big satellite dishes, Corvettes and trains."

To claim the points -- which no one ever keeps track of -- all you have to do is be the first in the car to yell "Zip!" when you see one of the items.

And as the game is passed on to different people, it's sometimes hard to remember exactly what is Zip-worthy. New rules are constantly being created, which is really the fun part.

Guilty Pleasures' Zip game includes a few of the original items -- white horses, trains -- but also Hummers, a shoe on the side of the road and churches.

Another friend invented the "zip-zing" rule, which is totally confusing and only he understands.

The beauty of Zip, really, is that it is constantly evolving. Items can be added or subtracted -- which we should have done last weekend because there definitely were not enough white horses, trains or shoes on the side of the road on the way to Leavenworth to keep the game interesting.

There were, however, plenty of great signs for hours of "in your pants" play, which, unfortunately for the accordion fans, did not end once we left the car.

 

* Guilty Pleasures is a weekly look at whatever Guilty Pleasures wants to look at.