I played croquet as a kid. Naturally, not at the championship level. At the home backyard level.
Saturday, July 15, 2006
This is How I Learned Chesterton Wrote about Croquet
I played croquet as a kid. Naturally, not at the championship level. At the home backyard level.
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There's croquet, and then there's Evil Croquet. What is Evil Croquet? You play on a hillside, or in an area with a lot of trees in the way. Or both, for Really Evil Croquet.
ReplyDeleteOne hand also must be holding a beer.
Does it matter what kind of beer?
ReplyDeleteOh no, that's not evil croquet. Evil croquet is playing croquet with my husband. Ask my kids, ask my sister-in-law (she won't play croquet with him becaue she says she's apt to kill him). He's normally a nice, mild mannered, not highly competitive person, but put a corquet mallet in his hands and he's transformed into something very different.
ReplyDeleteLiz: you've described my mother. She used to play to win, no matter who she whomped along the way (even ankles, so watch out!). I had forgotten all about that. She plays monopoly that way, too. A mild mannered person on the outside, a highly competetive croquet-playing-monopoly-loving mother on the inside.
ReplyDeleteCandlestring: cold beer.
ReplyDeleteMy grandfather (mom's father) was like that too: cheated shameless at croquet. Once made my dad's mother so mad she threw down her mallet in the middle of a game, refusing to play any more. He played with a beer in his hand too, between tending the ribs. :-)
My mother did not cheat. She was just ruthlessly determined to win.
ReplyDeleteMy husband too, Nancy, he doesn't cheat, but he will ruthlessly "send" the same person's ball way out into the neighboring field time after time if it happens to be the one easiest to "send." It didn't even matter if the person in question was his six year old son. Although, I must admit, he was always much softer on his daughter (not his wife or sister, though).
ReplyDeleteCheating is an honorable and venerable tradition in Evil Croquet.
ReplyDeleteI just read "The Perfect Game" a couple of nights ago. (It's in Tremendous Trifles.) I loved the bit about GKC "caressing" his opponent with the mallet...
ReplyDelete