Twenty Questions...aka 20Q

Here's my good news of the day (for me, anyway). I am DONE, as in FINISHED, with my Christmas shopping for the year! (and the crowd roars!).

I greatly dislike shopping when the stores are crowded. You will never see me doing my shopping the week before Christmas. How in the world some of you wait until Christmas Eve to shop is beyond me! Most would argue that is when the best sales occur. No sale is worth the pressure of dashing through a mall, knowing it's about to close and I still haven't picked out the perfect gift for my teenage nephew. (Who, by the way, is IMPOSSIBLE to buy for!) (I know, I ended that sentence in a preposition --can't help it --it's late and I don't have the brain power to think of how best to reword it....) Moving right along...

My nephew. I can't buy him clothes because every time I've done that in the past he tells me that he won't wear whatever it was that I bought him. I won't buy him music - because I don't appreciate the music which he insists is good. Video games? I can't keep up with which ones he already owns. Books? He's not a reader.

Last evening, when I was finishing up my Christmas shopping, I discovered this great 'thing' in StuffMart. The PERFECT gift for my nephew! I'ts called 20Q. It claims it can read my mind - it will guess my thoughts. Ha. Right. It states "Try Me!" in big letters on the package. So I stood in the aisle at StuffMart and took it up on its challenge. Basically, it's an electronic game of twenty questions. You think of something, it asks you questions about that something. You punch in your answer of 'unknown', 'no','yes', or 'sometimes'. It attempts to guess what you're thinking.

My first thought: Elephant. Well --it guessed it in 20 questions. Then I thought, "Well, that was too easy.", so I tried: Owl. Again - guessed in 20 questions. I thought, 'okay - let's get real here' - and I chose a more difficult object: Tape. It took 24 questions! Yeah --a victory for me --no --it still flashed "I WIN" --because it did guess the object that I was thinking. I give up --let me continue my shopping and deal with this at home! I tossed two in the cart - one for my nephew and another for someone else --maybe my niece --maybe my stepdaughter. It's undecided at this time.

Anyway - flash to home: As I unloaded my bounty from the van and hid things around the house this evening to keep them safe from the eyes of a four-year-old, I took the 20Q game out and tried to stump it again.
Bubbles. It guessed it.
Cards. Got it.
Let me get REALLY tricky...
Christmas Tree. It got it again!
I’m thinking that there’s no way to stump this toy.

It’s obviously a space alien in disguise.

Go buy it for all the teenagers in your life. I’m going to buy another one for my nephew because this one will be worn out long before Christmas!