Guys Can Invent a Game Anywhere

On a recent afternoon, I sat with a female colleague enjoying one of those fancy-schmancy cold coffee drinks at Starbucks.

Like any guy, I drank mine too fast and was done before she was one-third of the way finished. So what did I do to kill the idle time? I ripped little pieces of napkin, rolled them into balls and tried to throw them into her cup.

Very adult, right?

But that’s what guys do--pass the time with mindless activity.

Sure, you might call throwing balled-up shards of paper littering, but to me, and most other guys, it’s a game. Give us five minutes and almost any ordinary household item and we’ll create a game.

When I was in college, I was the editor of the school newspaper. I was always in the office. My desk was littered with, well, litter. But also strewn about the office were many toys.

From a dartboard (plastic tips, this was college after all) to playing cards to windup toys, I had a veritable playground in my office. One such item was the Nerf-type basketball set.

After a few grueling two-on-two, full-contact games of basketball, the plastic basketball hoop snapped in a million pieces. So we had a little ball, but no hoop into which to shoot it.

Never fear--men with idle time prevail! We played volleyball.

Well, it was a college newspaper version of volleyball. The conference table, in the middle of the room, was essentially the net. We developed a set of rules, had tournaments, even put masking tape along the floor to denote the boundaries.

The women, of course, mocked us.

Some actually complained it was hard to get any work done with what seemed like, based on the intensity of the competition, Olympic volleyball going on around them.

“Hey, this is college,” I might have countered. “We’re not expected to work.” Great leadership skills, huh?

Well, before you knew it, there was a women’s division in the newspaper office volleyball league. The women got their own teams together and challenged the winner of the men’s division to a universal championship.

Only problem, as I recall, was that someone broke the coffee pot with the ball around that time.

Missing classes and pushing deadlines was all well and good. But you break the coffee pot--that’s where we had to draw the line.

So the men devised another game. Calmer. Much quieter. More conducive to working. Able to be played at the conference table.

No less competitive, though.

The game, which had some less-than-memorable name apparently, used a cap you’d find on a bottle of spring water.

That was it--one lousy cap.

Essentially, you had to spin the cap with your index finger, trying to land it at the opposite edge of the table. Now before you mock it, this is not easy do.

Either you overshoot the cap or you come up short--in something like 97 of 100 shots.

It was those three other shots that you aimed for--and wasted hour after hour trying to achieve.

Over time, the game--sorry, the sport as we determined it should be known--became a bit more involved. We spun the caps off of phone books, dictionaries and other research books. We kept standings, had tournaments, and again a women’s league formed.

This type of mindless time-killing should come as no surprise. Men have been doing it for years.

Remember those little triangle paper footballs we would slide around tables for hours? We also played a similar game with three coins. Mindless activity.

And it’s not like the mindless activity is accompanied by mindful discussions. We don’t discuss the effect of the Fed’s rate cut on a struggling economy. We don’t ask about a cousin’s wedding plans. We barely know what kind of mood the other guy is in.

So here I am, almost 10 years out of college, reverting to an “anything to kill-time” routine, throwing tiny paper balls into any opening I can find around me.

Wouldn’t Mom and Dad be proud? At least I’m not wasting $10,000 of their money each year to avoid class by playing office volleyball anymore.

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Thomas J. McFeeley is a reporter for the Stamford Advocate, a Tribune Co. newspaper.