Couchfoot Screwoff
January 9th, 2007 by smidge
[This is the first in a series of posts I plan to write about the games we play to keep things interesting and help those long days go by…]
The name of this one says it all. I’ve been playing this game against my coworkers for longer than any of them probably know, but the other day it was made official when The Edge and I went head to head right there in a client’s living room as she stood watching (and wondering who would win, maybe silently judging our unprofessionalism, or maybe being won over by the cuteness of it).
Anyway it’s quite simple. When a couch needs to be turned on its back and the feet screwed off (most cheap couches have unscrewable feet) this game pretty much begs to be played, since the hauler who was holding either end of the couch is now tasked with unscrewing the two feet on his side, directly across from his partner who’s doing the same. There being a top foot and then a clear midpoint to the race as each participant makes his way to the bottom foot – the natural progression, top-to-bottom – makes this game very exciting.
In case you’re wondering, The Edge and I tied that day on a technicality: he finished screwing the feet off first, but the hole where his bottom foot went still had the screw jutting out of it.
i don’t know about that technicality. inventing rules in your favor? typical.
sounds more like a manufacturing or assembly defect to me.
have you ever had a client acknowledge this(other) game(s)? they are almost like little hauler mating rituals. cute!
I believe The Edge has something to say about the result also. Care to chime in, Edge?
The other day The tossed a heavy bag up into our truck and the client, an older, slightly loopy but not senile man, exclaimed - and I swear this is true - “What power!” I take that as a form of acknowledgment of the practice we’re always doing for a game I’ll write about soon, the ultimate game…the Haulympics!
About the mating rituals, I originally wrote “The Edge and I went at it right there in a client’s living room” but that sounded too sexual.
UPDATE: Today I got to play Couchfoot Screwoff with the commenter above, gnd. She suggested I include the following stipulation: if one player of Couchfoot Screwoff is awarded a handicap, the number of seconds of the handicap should be counted off at the beginning of the match, not at the end.
And in case you’re wondering, I gave gnd a 5-second handicap, so after I finished screwing off my two legs, I began counting “one one thousand, two one thousand…” until I got to three and she finished, meaning she beat me by two seconds. She pointed out that if I had counted the handicap first, and THEN came in with my two-hand strategy (learned from the Edge), she might not have copied my strategy in time to win. (Which is what she did.)
Congratulations, gnd.
nothing beats a good game of screwoff with smidge.