The Christmas Jitters!

Christmas means lots of things to many people, but for me, much of it has to do with meeting up with extended family, overeating, and playing lots of games. It also has to do with watching Dancesport and some terrible free-to-air Christmas movies, but those are avoided if possible, especially the latter.

Food was in abundance, and so were games. And relatives. Which meant playing in teams. We pulled out the first two games we could find, and wiped off the thick layer of dust which had acccumulated after possibly over a decade of neglect. One was Pictionary; the other Jitters.

We decided to try Jitters first.

Division was in four teams of two, and Mr Coffee and I were a team. Though most people found they were teams in name only, and much of the game was spent criticising each other's strategy and screeching at their teammate.

The game Jitters is thus named for its Jittery nature. You get a timer and have to make words with dice on cards - the more you make before the timer goes off, the better. And each card has a score according to difficulty. When you have decided you have completed as many as you can, you lock your point score in by switching off the timer. But if you take a card and don't finish it before your timer is up, you lose all your points for that round, including any cards you may have successfully completed.

Jitters was very successful as it was not only fun but brought out our character traits.

For instance, my cousin lazily let his fiancee do most of the work, but when she had finished a card, often frustrated her efforts, even though they were on the same team - which caused her to screech almost every round. Mr Coffee accused me of being bad at rolling dice and hiding cards from him (who, me?).

Now, perhaps that's not quite as deep as showing the relationship we all had with our mothers, but Jitters is on to something. Should be a compulsory accessory to every counsellor's kit.