Robert Forto

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NaBloPoMo: CandyLand or Chutes and Ladders?

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I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Todays topic is: Pick your poison: Candy Land or Chutes-and-Ladders and why?

I have said it twice now. I do not like board games. I think they are a waste of several hours of one’s life and if you can’t find anything better to do, don’t do anything at all. That is a saying that my mom used to tell me.

But in the spirit of good sportsmanship, if I had to choose and it was a life or death decision, I guess I would have to pick CandyLand.

But did you know, The 1950s polio scare produced parental panic—swimming pools emptied, parks cleared out, civic events were deserted. People stayed away from crowds. And parents kept kids indoors. Kawash says frightened parents seeking to prevent their children’s exposure may have seized upon the game as an indoor alternative to the dangers lurking outside.

Wow.

There’s more:  The initial packaging images are reminiscent of the iconic Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, where children were abandoned in the forest. During the polio epidemic, with lengthy hospitalizations, children often found themselves similarly separated from parents.  However, the CandyLand forest is neither dark nor scary. The game helped to ameliorate the parent-child separation, transforming the experience of the polio ward “into a sugar-laced holiday.”

I know, I know. This post was supposed to be about play. Not scaring little kids and their over-protective parents of 2012, a full 62 years since this polio thing.

So lets get down to it and play an “adult version” of CandyLand, shall we?

How to Play the Drinking Game CandyLand

This game puts an adult twist on the childhood favorite CandyLand. This drinking game blends the thrills of a board game with the excitement of a drinking game. Learn how to play the drinking game CandyLand by following these steps.

Things You’ll Need

2 to 4 Players

Alcoholic beverages

CandyLand game

Instructions

1. The game is played the traditional way, but the colors on the card have an additional command. The player picks a card, moves his person and does the drinking rule for that card.

2. Card Drinking Rules: Red = Make or break a rule Blue = All guys drink Purple = All girls drink Yellow = Player takes a drink Green = Make a rhyme Orange = Categories Doubles = Take two drinks and do that card color Cheats = Waterfall The People = Down your drink The Black Dots = Pass out three drinks

3. The winner of the game makes everyone down their remaining drinks all at once.

Tips & Warnings

Please drink responsibly and don’t drink and drive

I don’t know about you but the drinking version sure has to be more fun than sitting around the house watching the Lifetime channel or the struggling Oprah network, OWN.

______________________

Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort.

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NaBloPoMo: Who wouldn’t you play with as a child?

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I am participating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

The topic for today is: Who wouldn’t you play with as a child?

I grew up in typical middle America in the heart of the iron belt along the Ohio River Valley. It was full of coal mines, trains and hard workin’ men that you may see in Ford truck commercials.

On our street, Collis Avenue, we had our smattering of recently returning Vietnam veterans, a salesman or two, plenty of housewives that loved their bonbons and their afternoon “stories”. These same ladies would prowl the neighborhood at night after dinner, usually of the goulash variety, to hawk their wares from Avon and Tupperware.

On one end of the street was my little girl friend Micthy and here little sister Cindy that cried as much as my brother, which is hard to beat because he fully lived up to his nickname: Cryin’ Ryan.

On the other end of the street was a man-child, a beast of a boy, with greasy blonde hair, buck teeth, dirty Toughskins and worn and faded concert T-shirst from the 60s that rolled through town a decade before he was born.

His name was Zeke. 

Who names their kid that? He is sure to end up in a correctional facility or in films that you are forbidden to see before the ripe-old age of 17.

Zeke was the neighborhood Scut Frakus sans the toadie. He was fully a one man operation and he was only seven–a year my senior.

You would often see my mom in the driveway as I headed out to play with her hands on her hips and sportin’ a housecoat giving me the what-for.

She would say,“I better not catch you down at that Zeke kid’s house or there will be hell to pay!”

Even though Zeke only lived six, maybe seven, doors down, that was the forbidden zone of Collis Avenue. You would often catch us kids taking the long way ALL the way around the block to meet our other playmates that lived PAST Zeke’s place.

We never played with Zeke, at least my little clique. We stayed as clear as we could of him but giving him mucho respect as he trolled the halls of Highlawn Elem. Even as a kindergartener Zeke commanded a head nod from the boys as he passed them in the halls. It’s a guy thing. If you are a lady, you might not understand.

I don’t know what happened to Zeke. But my money is on one the fore-mentioned occupations. But if not, he would be wise to change his name to something like John Smith or something. Because in this day an age, with a name like Zeke, you might be on one of those lists at the airport.

Who wouldn’t you play with as a child?

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

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NaBloPoMo: Talk about a toy you broke as a child

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I am particpating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is: Talk about a toy you broke as a child.

When I was a kid I rarely broke my toys. I don’t know if I was a bit OCD or maybe a little bit anal but I treasured my toys.

But my goldfish Marvin is a different story. 

I was in about sixth grade and we were getting ready to move from Jacksonville, North Carolina to the suburbs of the nations capital. We were a military family so we moved a lot.

In my bedroom I had a 10-gallon tank with just one goldfish in it. It was one of those big white and orange one’s with the fan tail and big eyes.

As the move got closer I knew I couldn’t take Marvin with me and my only choice was to flush him down the toilet. What’s wrong with that? He will be fine. He will go down the pipe and end up in the ocean and get to hang out with all the other flushies.

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was Saturday morning and I had just finished watching the requisite 5-hours of Saturday Morning cartoons. I loved the Looney Tunes and singing dorky songs at full volume about congressional bills and the food pyramid.

I headed to my room, put TAPS on my boom box and scooped up Marvin in one of those little green nets.

He flopped around a bit as we headed to the bathroom down the hall.

That 20 foot hallway seemed like a mile. In fact, my brother Ryan even had time to stick his head out his bedroom door to say,

“Dead fish walking!” at full shout.

I entered the bathroom with the paisley wallpaper and towels that we weren’t allowed to use and lifted the lid on the throne.

I read Marvin his last rites and dropped him in the tank.

With a flush and a swirl Marvin was gone.

At least until later in the day when I came back to the bathroom to do “my business”.

Lo and behold there was Marvin! 

He was swimming in the tank. He didn’t want to go join the flushies. He wanted to stay with me.

How could this be? He didn’t get a reprevie from the Supreme Court. We didn’t get a call from the governor. He was still alive.

I yelled down the hall: “Mom, Marvin is still here! He didn’t get flushed!”

Within seconds my brother entered the room and unceremoniously flicked the handle on the commode. The water swirled around like a whirlpool within an instant Marvin was gone.

That was it. He was gone. No more Marvin.

I would like to think that all these years later Marvin is still alive and well. He has to be. I just saw a show with Larry the Cable Guy where he was catching carp with his bare hands in a lake in Iowa, I believe. Those fish were as big as my leg and must have weighed 25 pounds!

I just wonder how many Marvin’s and Abraham’s were in that lake with Larry? My bet is a lot!

______________________

Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

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NaBloPoMo: Who did you play with as a child?

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I am particpating in the NaBloPoMo challenge for May. It should be a fun one. It is titled: Play.

Today’s topic is who did you play with as a child?

I grew up, well at least until the second grade, in Huntington, West Virginia. My mom was a college student at Marshall University and my dad was in the “sales” business.

Back in the 1970s we did things a bit different than today. I guess it was a different time back then. Now some of the innocence is lost from childhood. That is sad.

My two best friends were Roy who lived across the alley and Micthy who lived down the street.

Our curfew was the street lights and my mom didn’t call my cell phone. She just yelled down the street, “time to come in!”

Micthy, Roy, and I played outside making forts and playing football. Not sitting in our rooms online with one ear-bud in our ear.

We got dirty and we had no idea what hand sanitizer was. Even though we were REQUIRED to bring two boxes of Kleenex to school at the start of the year, I never used them. Not once.

I rode my Big Wheel around all around town chasing my two friends down the block. Eventually I even rode my bike WITHOUT a helmet.

Micthy, Roy, and I would drink out of the hose and we even walked to school in Kindergarten. We didn’t worry about the boogyman and we weren’t afraid of the dark.

None of us were diagnosed as being hyper-active and we all ate too much sugar. In fact I was allowed to ride my Big Wheel to the Stop n’ Go and buy my own candy. I used to take in a dime and buy 10 pieces on the rack closest to the floor.

Now here it is 35 years later and I sometimes wonder what ever happened to Roy and Mitchy. I haven’t seen them since I left all those years ago but I am betting they turned out alright. Just like me.

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Robert Forto is mushin’ down a dream in the wilds of Alaska. He and is wife are raising two teenagers at Forto’s Fort. 

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NaBloPoMo: Last meal. What would it be?

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If you knew that whatever you ate next would be your last meal, what would you want it to be?

I have said before and I will say again that if I was stranded on a deserted island and all I had with me was a friend named “Wilson”, my thoughts, and one food it would have to be pizza.

Pizza is the world’s most perfect food. It has all food groups on that cool pyramid that we learned about in school. Never-mind what the creepy lunch lady served us it always conformed to that dagnabit pyramid.

With that being said, if I knew what my last meal would be it would have to be a large High Protein Land pizza from Moose’s Tooth pizza in Anchorage, Alaska.  I know, I know, pizza is pizza right? Wrong. I have had a pizza pie in just about every state in the nation and noting compares to the Moose’s Tooth. If you don’t believe me, come on up to the Last Frontier and give it a try.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Moose’s Tooth or any of its affiliates and I am not paid to promote them in any manner. I do not have family or friends working there and try if I might I can not become the mayor of Moose’s Tooth. Believe me I am trying.

I guess if I was on my death bed or god forbid the execution chamber I would request pizza for my last meal. Well, unless I am on death row in Texas. They used to allow the guys heading to meet their maker, whomever that may be, to order whatever they wanted and the guards would make it up all fancy for them.

Just recently, some nutcase ordered up an eight course meal of chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Prison officials said he didn’t eat any of it.  So what happens? Like always, some politico, probably running for city council or something like that, raised a fuss and lickety-split last meals are history.

Well, that’s that. At least in the Longhorn state. Lucky for most of us we can eat as we please and that equals just one thing–quoting the great Homer Simpson: hmmmmm pizza!

If you knew, what would you want your last meal to be? 

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