Foos-Pong, Stair Sledding and Other Holiday Fun

The holidays are winding down. Your living room floor is littered with shards of wrapping pa- per and crushed cellophane bows. The trash can out the back door is sixty-five percent full of cardboard; the other thirty-five consists of crumbled styrofoam and hacked-open plastic clam- shells.

The new toys were fun, but after a while Junior's remote control gizmo will suffer a fatal one-vehicle collision with Cousin Ellie's leg, and that twenty-seven- in-one screwdriver ding- dong you got Uncle Buster will give up the ghost right smack dab in the middle of an attempt to repair the over- worked, much-abused stove.

So as you gather around the kitchen table and say Christmas grace over mi- crowaved personal pizzas, you'll probably wind up pondering ways to enjoy some stress-free holiday family time - besides all those TV Christmas spe- cials.

Have no fear! The Phil- brook/Rickel clan has been there before and emerged unscathed, bearing solutions to your terrible dilemma in the form of games and activi- ties that most of your kin will probably enjoy! Such as:

Foos-Pong. Basically, it's foosball with a ping-pong ball, and virtually anything can happen - cross-table kicks, ricochets off the ceil- ing, perfect shots arbitrarily backfiring, stray balls bonk- ing younger brothers square on the head, etc. - Board Game Mashup. Take two board games and com- bine their rules, playing pieces, and/or boards for a truly one-of-a-kind activity.

Also, feel free to add some of your own rules - for ex- ample, whenever you pass

"GO", you must gather up all your consonants and scatter them over the other players like confetti. Can- dyLife, Monopoleckers, and Par-chess-i are some of my personal favorites. - Who doesn't love an old- fashioned taffy pull? But let's face it - nobody has time to make their own taffy these days, much less the working stove needed to do so. So you'll have to rough it like the pioneers did - go to the gas station and buy ten or twelve Laffy

Taffy ropes of various fla- vors. From here, you have two options: you could tie them all together and have a good old-fashioned tug- of-war, or (for those of you who are short on space) have people vote on which flavor they like best! Get it? It's a taffy poll! (Man, I must be spending too much time with the relatives if that sounds funny.) - Stair Sledding. Get your under-utilized sled (that darn snow just won't stick!), wrap it in a blanket

(fleece works best), tow it to the top of the stairs, andhellip;wellhellip;you know what to do. (Note: This is a very good way to wind up in a wheelchair. See next column for tips on wheelchair stair-skiing.) - Writing a Novel. One Christmas, there was a line to access one's manuscript on our computer. A line. So this year, we compromised and did a collaborative story - each person takes turns typing the next para- graph. (Heyhellip;wait a min- utehellip;don't you dare kill

Sabrina off! I know where you sleep, fiend!) - Caroling. If you have one of those highly musical families, put on matching scarves and go door-to- door. If not, take a page from my little brother's book and enlist the services of a musical ornament or singing stuffed animal.

Then politely demand fig- gy pudding.