The Game of Telephone

Each week for my larger adult classes, we try to play some type of word game.  We have played pictionary, bingo, twenty questions, I never, balderdash, and most recently ‘telephone,’ the game where one person whispers a phrase into the ear of the person next to them in a circle, and then the message is sent around the circle in whispers, and finally announced to the room by the last person.  

Last week in my class at the community center which is attended by several elderly people, this game proved problematic.  First, about a third of the 15 people in the group are so hard of hearing that they have virtually lost the ability to whisper, and everyone in the circle had to forcibly avoid hearing by humming, or plugging there ears as the message was transferred to the people ahead of them.  The second problem was the Japanese fear of making a mistake.  Many of the students, if they didn’t hear the message quite right, insisted on listening again and again until they were sure they had heard the phrase correctly (which, of course, ruins the point of the game, which is to see how terribly off the group can get from the original phrase).

Still, despite these obstacles, I managed to get the entire class with a seemingly easy sentence.  After trying a few simple phrases like ‘the sky is blue,’ and ‘my name is Joe,’ which where sent around the circle in the above described manner, I gave them this sentence: “My pants are green,” and asked them not to worry so much about getting it right.  This was not only a simple sentence in my opinion, but it was also fact.  I was wearing a green suit.  However, you must also know that the word ‘pants’ as it is used in every day Japanese (pronounced pan-tsu) does not mean ‘jeans’ or ‘slacks,’ but rather ‘underpants.’  

All my young students giggle when I show them a picture of slacks and say ‘pantsu’, and even the adults tend to forget the English usage of the word, as was the case during this game.  I watched as these women (and one 88 year old man) whispered the sentence around the room, turned red, giggled, widened  there eyes, cast coy looks at one another, and generally squirmed as if they were telling a dirty joke.  The product of the whispering was priceless.  Not only had they misunderstood the word pants, but somewhere along the line the word ‘green’ had been misheard as ‘clean’ and the final sentence, announced to the class by the oldest and deafest member of the circle was: “My panties aren’t clean,” which caused a general uproar and many more blushing faces.  My announcement of the original sentence was met by another guffaw, a little more blushing, and smiles all around.