The kids in my family have been Buick automobile spotters for many years now. It began over a decade ago when General Motors (Buick Division) gave away floppy disks with cute advertising animations to promote their cars. We all started watching for Buicks on the road and crying out "Buick!" whenever one came into sight. Buicks were ideal for this enterprise. They were neither too common nor too rare. They also had a distinctive profile, grill design, and logo that made them readily, but not trivially, identifiable.

The Game evolved from that. The first to call "Buick!" gets 5 points, and whoever then confirms the observation gets 2 points, with an additional bonus point going back to the initial spotter. (Wags then try to confirm the confirmation and argue that they deserve half a point for that; they are ignored.) A false call incurs a -5 penalty, with +5 awarded to the one who catches the mistake. A blue Buick, aka a "Bluick", is worth double. No score for parked cars. Special credit for naming the model ("LeSabre", "Skylark", etc.).

In actuality, the Game has always been more conceptual than real. Nobody keeps track of points beyond a single trip, if that long. It's the silly fun of the play, not the outcome, that matters.

Saturday, June 17, 2000 at 14:04:02 (EDT) = 2000-06-17

TopicPersonalHistory - TopicHumor - TopicRecreation

(correlates: MercifulSchadenfreude, Swimming Fine, IdiosyncraticFandom, ...)