Page 71 of Eco-Activist's Mountain Men
"Aha," I say. "You are now going to act out the second word for us."
She nods and smiles. Then she cups a hand to one ear and dramatically acts out someone listening.
"You're listening?" She indicates we're in the right area with her hands.
"You're hearing?" Again, in the ballpark but not exactly the word we're looking for.
She mimics hearing different things from various parts of the room.
"Different sounds?" Asks Luke. She smiles, nods a yes, and encourages him to shorten what he has said.
"Sounds?"
"Shorter than 'Sounds'"? Another nod from Luna
"Sound?" A big grin and a thumbs up tell us we're on track.
"So," Eric summarizes. It's "The Sound, something, something"
Luna puts out three fingers.
"Third word," we all chorus.
She uses her thumb and index finger to make the universal symbol for "small" and says, "This means it's a small word. When you see that, it means you can just run through small words like and, it, of, etc, until you hit on the correct one."
"But isn't that cheating?"
She shrugs. "It's how they play it, so I guess not."
"In. On. And. Is. So." Eric is steadily going through his personal dictionary of short words, eventually trying "Of." This gets an immediate reaction from Luna, who touches her nose, then points to Eric.
"This means Eric just got it on the nose," she smiles in encouragement at us.
"Okay, so where are we?" I ask, having slightly lost the thread.
Luke butts in to explain. "It's a four-word title for a song and a movie, and it's called The Sound of Something."
“The Sound of Music!” Jack states it at exactly the same moment I yell the answer out.
“Ha! See, I’m not totally uncultured.” I'm actually quite pleased with myself for getting it.
"Yeah, you did well, all of you. I'm proud of you, boys," she tells us. "Jack, why don't you have a go?"
We all cheer as Jack reluctantly rises to his feet, looking mighty embarrassed out in front of us all.
"Remember," says Luna. "You have to think of the name of a movie, or a book, or a TV show, or something, then you're gonna tell us how many words are in the title, then you're gonna act it out for us to guess. Got it?"
He nods, his face deadly serious, like he's taking part in some kind of life-and-death military exercise, rather than merely playing a parlor game in the kitchen with his buddies.
After a moment or two of thinking, Jack brightens—he's thought of something. He holds out three fingers.
"Three words," Says Eric.
He mimes a TV screen.
"TV show," Eric announces.
Jack then points to Luke, flexes dramatically, and makes the universal gesture for ‘guns' with his biceps.
