Mr. Big Food, Miss M., and I were chatting about a hypothetical dinner party this evening. We decided to turn our chit-chat into a little game.

The question is, “Who would you invite to an imaginary dinner party?” 

RULES

The invited guests must be Real People. Dr. Who, Sherlock, and Mr. Spock cannot be invited. (That’s a game for another rainy week.) They can be from any where in the world but they must have lived within the last 150 or so years.* Neither Aristotle nor Jesus can be invited this time, maybe some other. 



It is a formal dinner party of the sort that was hosted in crappy olden days– cocktails, horse ovaries, call to find your place-card at the table… .  Players must provide a reason/emotion for inviting guests to the dinner party. This is not a question of “who do I want to meet?” (You can meet folks over coffee.) This is a dinner party. Part of the game involves arranging place-cards around the table(s) to facilitate conversation among guests.

PLAYERS

The number of actual players is limited to six. The number of participants in the game, i.e., folks who want to contribute opinions and so forth, is unlimited.

[Daughter C., Kat & Ton– do you want to play, too? I need to know so I know how many place settings we need. As it stands, we are committed to 21 guests + Mr. Big Food, Miss M. & I. One table of 24. But the Farm’s a big place– we can accommodate more, especially since it’s an imaginary dinner party. It could easily be two tables of 24. Please respond to this inquire as soon as you can. Thank you!]

THE GAME BOARD

Tomorrow I will take stock of the storeroom’s content of poster board (for the table), index cards (place-cards), and velcro (so as to move place-cards about as our guest list grows and we refine the seating arrangement). By tomorrow evening, I should have the Game Board ready and we should be ready to play Round #1.

PLAY

Each evening, each host/hostess submits one guest’s name and places it at the table. Each evening thus represents one “round” of play. The maximum number of rounds is seven.

The game should get interesting after several rounds of play– as the table fills up! And here, I have to admit that we haven’t thought this quite through. What do you do if Janice Joplin is seated between John Wayne and Carnap at the end of the sixth round? 

Kum bay ya, my Lord, kum bay ya

We don’t yet have rules for moving place-cards placed in previous rounds around. Give us a minute.

WINNING

Someone’s singing, my Lord, kum bay ya

Clearly, Rocky & Missy & Sadie win. 

And a good time will be had by all. 
~~

*If you want to invite T. Jefferson you may even though he lived more than 150 years ago. You may not invite Kant. Here’s our ad hoc reasoning. TJ would probably get a kick out of our modern inventions and have a lot to offer if conversation turned to gardening. Kant, not so much on either score.