Charades

I recently played a game of celebrity charades. This involved acting out for your team whichever celebrity name you happened to draw from a jar (all of the participants wrote down 2 celebrity names before the start of the game). This was quite amusing considering the large group of people playing, their varying ages (25 - 67), and the alcoholic beverages consumed beforehand. This game definitely had significant time constraints; everything was rushed, and people were panicking trying to get through as many names as possible before their time ran out. It made me feel like I was in NYC during rush hour, fighting the line at Starbucks, and still expecting to make it to work on time - Sheesh! When reflecting on this game and my experience playing it I thought about the importance of language and verbal communication in our everyday lives. It was really difficult to only act and/or use motions and not be able to verbally communicate at all. Actions or movements that would have seemed to give good clues to teammates actually turned out to be pretty difficult to figure out. Maybe one of the reasons this game is so entertaining is because we aren't used to not using words to communicate. I also thought about the affect the media has on us. The celebrities that had recently been in the media (probably overly aired) were really easy to guess (Sarah Palin's name appeared in the jar 5 times). It was also interesting to think about the different perceptions people got from various nonverbal actions. This applies to everyday life because I think we often interpret things differently than how they really are. Our perceptions and experiences contribute significantly to how we interpret things around us, including other people.