A friend of mine has two giant dry-erase boards on one of her living room walls. I’ve seen her plan out briefs and memos for Legal Research and Writing on them, and around finals time they get covered in complicated graphs and charts of things like Supreme Court precedent. But last weekend, our entire group of friends piled into that room to use them for something much more fun — something our planning e-mails have started referring to as Outrageous Pictionary.
After two installments of this game, I’m not actually certain how outrageous our version is. The rules are typical, about the same as the official kind you can buy at stores. I’m sure that version has a much easier and more G-rated selection of words to draw, but there’s no evidence we are any more outrageous than any other group of America’s best and brightest, most sleep-deprived future lawyers with their hearts set on giving each other a difficult time.
Of course, I have to imagine that our games provide all kinds of dead giveaways that we’re law students. Along with the names of disgraced politicians and characters from Jersey Shore, our clues include a mix of vague concepts like “incompetence” and technical terms like “actuary” and “arbitrary and capricious.” I submitted “Alan Dershowitz” last time, but no one had drawn him yet by the time we called it quits (we tend to get pretty enthused and submit a lot more clues than we could ever use in one night. I was also sad not to see anyone pull “Bristol Palin,” but such is life.)
Sometimes we really stump each other, while other times we surprise ourselves with how easy our shared interests and experiences make certain clues. The first time we played, I must have spent half an hour trying to get my team to guess “boots with the fur” — lyrics to a rap song the entire other team knew, but which nobody on my team knew — but during a more recent game, one of my teammates only had to draw a big television with a football shape near the bottom for me to guess “Family Guy.”
And yes, I did just say half an hour. If ever there was proof that Harvard Law students don’t live up to their reputation for competitiveness, it’s this: we never use a timer, and while we supposedly keep score, it’s always dead even because each team just lets the other keep going until they guess right.
Plus, the game is always a reminder — as if we don’t get enough of these in class — of the stunning resourcefulness and creativity of my peers. For example, when one player’s picture of a man behind bars was not helping his team guess my ingenious contribution of “registered sex offender,” he turned the bars into yard lines on a football field and added arrows pointing toward goal posts to suggest the “offender” part. The rest followed before long, thankfully without getting too explicit (although I can’t say the same for a few choice clues the other team obliged us to guess.)
With the spring semester about to start, it may be a while before everyone has time for another round of Outrageous Pictionary. But it’s fun enough that I’m sure sooner or later someone will insist. Then, when we all graduate and these people become appellate clerks, high-powered attorneys and holders of public office, I’ll always be able to remember the absurd things I’ve seen them draw and heard them shout!
– Lea
