Slice of Life: In search of lunatic

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Hiking through Rocky Mountain National Park, Larkin, Clare and I listened to the banter of a group of boys--most likely campers--playing a word game. I'd forgotten about the game until I listened to them debate whether flan was a word, and then the rules for the game came back to me. You had to go around in a circle adding letters, always with a word in mind, but whoever completed a word would be out. Larkin, Clare and I started our own game, agreeing that the first one of us to complete the word horse would be the loser. 

As we came upon a mountain lake, two men were taking a picture of themselves. I was struggling with how I was going to deal with the fact that I was facing L-U-N-A. (We agreed that luna seemed too foreign and we didn't have wifi to check whether to allow it or not. I was happy to be playing a game, and I didn't protest much...) I offered to take the picture, and I laughingly told them I needed a letter to continue the game--the only word I could think of was lunar. 

They didn't seem to be contemplating my issue too hard; they were much more interested in the scenery and the photo. They even offered to take our picture as I kept winding my way through the alphabet in search of a word other than lunar. They took a great picture--one of my favorites-- and as they headed away from us, one of the men turned around. 

"Lunatic," he said. 

LUNATIC! 

Larkin would up with the next letter as we continued along our hike. 

I have since played this game with many different combinations of people, and it's great for spelling as well as vocabulary development. It's even great for a laugh!

Happy Slicing!