Our Next Game Is Called 'Feel Up'...

"Ok, now for our next game, you have to be very, very, VERY comfortable with your partner. We need three couples, or pairs of people, ok?" Mumsy Hyphenatie sweetly curves her cherubic lips, displaying her lustrous pearly whites. "We need to move the chairs out of the way and create a little bit of space to play. Let's move them to the edges of the room." She starts moving chairs and the party guests follow suit, moving their chairs toward the peppermint striped cream and rouge walls.

As the rules are explained, I reach for and open the gallon-sized Ziploc bag marked "FEEL UP: 6 PEOPLE". If that isn't an open invitation, I don't know what is.

I walk around and start blind-folding the baby shower participants, and Mumsy continues, "Ok you are now being blindfolded. We are going to attach five clothes pins to each person's clothing. The object of the game is for each person to find the clothes pins on their partner and collect them in their hands. The first team to do this wins."

Tieing the last stretch of blue/black fabric with gold sparkles, I look over at Mumsy and say, "Ok, they're done. Should we spin them around, beat them with bats, or just let them go at it?"

"Let's spin them around a few times THEN let them go at it, ha ha ha," Mumsy guffaws loudly and continues to naughtily chortle as she starts turning one of the couples in circles. In the playing field, we have six dizzy people: a married couple, a pair of twenty-something women, and an elderly man and woman who had just met an hour prior.

Like a sassy, breast feeding Julius Caesar dressed in black, my sister sticks out her thumb and says, "Let the clothes-pinning begin!" As "I'm A Little Teapot" starts playing, we attach wooden clamps to the participants' neck collars, underarm area, backside, behind the knee, and at shoe level. The music stops, we say, "Get ready, Get set, Go!" Immediately, "The Simple Bear Necessities" starts playing and the couples lunge at each other like large football players.... ROAR!!!!! the crowd rumbles and bellow in support of the now blind participants.

The two girls bonk heads and the married man accidentally gropes his wife in an uncomfortable spot. The senior woman stands there, frigid, as the old man leaps toward her shoulders in search of his woody prey. The perplexed husband stops his wife's giddy fondling and says, "What are you doing?! Here, turn around!" At which point, the wife smiles broadly, shoots her arms straight up, starts turning around and around screaming, "aaaaaaahhhh!"

He stops her by grabbing her waist, they bump each other's torsos and fall to the ground in comical snorts. Meanwhile, the two girls discover that they have ticklish spots they never knew existed. The crowd thunders louder with laughter. I turn my attention back to the newly familiarized older couple.

In a semi-dignified manner, the older man bashfully frisks his new acquaintance with two open palmed hands. She's still motionless, and we're not sure if she's suffered a heart attack. Out of the blue, she grabs his head and pushes it downward toward the floor. He pats down her leg, causing her to yelp in a Pollyanna-ish manner. Jumping, she kicks up her heals, and becomes a youthful school girl. "OH! No one has touched my leg like that in eleven years," she laughs out loud. Meanwhile, the two girls have worked out a scheme: one kneels and searches the lower levels of the other, while the woman standing searches around the kneeling one's head. They end up winning, but not without a few camera flashes displaying blindfolded blushed faces in vicarious positions.

The older woman, taking off her blindfold and gesturing to her partner, says to the group, "I knew where that last one was on him, but I didn't want to touch him there!" The clothes pin she was just referring to? It was behind his knee. Distribute the presents for winning, and give the older woman a thong for modesty - that's what baby showers are all about.