Food, Home and Style

Thanksgiving Road-Trip Games

Next week, 38.4 million of us are expected to go “over the hills and through the woods”—or at least to travel by car to a Turkey Day destination. That’s just a slight 1.4 percent uptick from last year. Back then, gas prices were much lower, having fallen off from a high of $4.10 a gallon in the summer of 2008 to around $1.80 by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. But nerves were perhaps also more frayed then, too, as we watched the banking system continue to teeter.

This year, the national average price of gas is about $2.70 a gallon, so we will have to spend more to get to grandfather’s house. Pair that with a continuing climb in the number of people unemployed, and you’d actually think the number of travelers would be even lower.

Either way, as you contemplate the hours you’ll spend on a jam-packed I-95, or wherever you may be, we’d like to bring back the Recession Road-Trip Games we offered up in the summer:

Song: Old McDonald Had a Farm Old McDonald Sold His Farm
Old McDonald sold his farm
Ee i ee i oh
And at the sale there were some cows
Ee i ee i oh
With a moo moo here
And a moo moo there
Ee i ee i oh
etc.

Repeat with different farm animals.

Song: 150 Million Working Americans
Sung to the tune of “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”:
150 million working Americans
150 million working Americans
Take one down, kick him around
149 million working Americans

Sing this song until you get to 138 million—approximately the number of Americans left with jobs after the endless layoffs of the last two years.

20 Questions
To keep it fun, make a rule that the object has to be something related to the downturn. Such as: a pink slip; or a clunker; or Bernie Madoff.

The Picnic Game
In a twist on the old, “I went to a picnic and I brought,” let’s note that not everyone is as flush as they once were—today’s car-game picnics need to be budget-conscious. Instead, try, ” I went to a picnic and all I could afford to bring was…”

Name That Bank
For sophisticated financial crisis aficionados. Test one another’s expertise with clues on such downturn highlights as which bank failed first (Bear Stearns), where credit default swaps were first invented (JPMorgan), or which bank paid back its government debt first (Goldman Sachs did).

The Car Next Door
Create narratives about the people rolling along next to you: Have they got jobs? Did anyone take a salary cut this year? How are they adjusting their spending habits? What opportunities have they found in the downturn? Let the story take its own course!

Rock, Paper, Scissors
This timeless classic has never been more relevant—what more do you need than these three simple imaginary objects, especially if you can’t afford them!