Sad Libs

Rabbit Rabbit! Yesterday I had lunch at Barnes & Noble. While I was deep into Wired’s article on Sergey Brin’s dedication to researching Parkinson’s Disease a mom and her 3 kids sat down behind me with snacks. As the two younger boys ran around the oldest child, a girl, engaged her mother in a game of Mad Libs.

Remember Mad Libs? You ask your partner for a list of words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc) and fill their answers into the blanks in the story. Then you read the story back and the nonsensical words your partner provided without knowing their context makes for a strange and funny story!

Except…not.

This girl was just reading through the story sentence by sentence, and prompting her mother for the words in context.

Girl: “The baker said, ‘I can make an adjective cake for you.’”
Mother: “tasty”
Girl: Okay. “The baker said, ‘I can make a tasty cake for you.’”

I could have cried for this poor [noun] who is going to think that Mad Libs is total [adjective] waste of time and wished she could have had her mother [verb] a Twilight book instead. Team [boy's name] FTW!

Then I was struck with [noun] as I [adverb] realized that the [adjective] mother most likely knew how to [verb] a Mad Libs story. Why didn’t that [noun] correct her daughter? Or at least read the very [adjective] directions that appear on every Mad Libs [noun]?

Although the company was [adjective] at least my [noun] was tasty!