Have yourself a Google-less Christmas

Have you ever wanted to Google something and not done it just to see if you could remember? Recently I couldn’t remember the name of a famous actor. I’d even read his memoir, which I could visualize: on the white dust jacket was his black silhouette ambling away with a cane. The title of the book (ironically) was My Name Escapes Me, and he starred in that famous movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. I was frustrated with myself, feeling my brain going to mush, so I refused to pick up my phone or ask anyone. I believed I would remember with enough attempts and decided to let my brain struggle. Three or four times I thought on it.

Then, on the morning of the third day, after my first cup of coffee, it suddenly snapped in—Alec Guinness! Reflexively I seized the dome of my head with my right hand and beamed my biggest smile. It felt so good!

Will the neuroscientists in the room please explain this?

Don’t we all delight in the ease we now have to find facts? Yet does this also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel when you make your mind do its own internal search?

Likewise, mobile, virtual gaming is exploding in popularity. An estimated xxxx million people (I would tell you how many, but I’d have to Google it) the world over now play mobile games, mainly by tapping the tips of their fingers on small glass screens. There’s no arguing how captivating these games can be, yet should they also give us a renewed appreciation for how good it can feel to play with our full hands as we manipulate real, three-dimensional objects?

We believe so.

That’s why here at Levenger we’ve been elfishly busy all year developing this season’s harvest of heritage gaming technology to delight your senses.

They are designed to connect mind and hand, and to activate connections between generations. Go ahead and Google, but not all the time. Play, also, with your full human, physical powers to connect with your loved ones, and yourself.

I love our Shut the Box,  Game Room in a Box, Domino-a-Go-Go  and Solitaire Times Two for the warm wood they put in your hand. The same is true of the Mancala game, which I also like because of its ancient origins that still connect us after all these years.

Even our puzzles—one of a Churchill painting, the other of a 14^th-century illuminated manuscript—are all wood, with the images created on archival paper.

I’d like to be like the Ghost of Christmas Present, invisibly watching generations old and young as they banter and tease and guess the answers in our Dickens Christmas Carol board game. (If you want a not-so-unfair advantage, read this edition of the book first. Some of the multiple-choice answers are found in the introduction…and would be hard to find even on Google.)

After hearing David McCullough say that he doesn’t write histories or biographies but rather, he tells a story, I want to better appreciate the storyteller’s craft. So I’m going to try out my storytelling skills using our Scheherazade Storytelling Game.

Tell me, dear reader, have you recently decided not to Google? Can you share a story of renewed appreciation for your full human capabilities? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below with your submission. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).

Comments

[Claire in Springfield]

So that is what is happening to my brain, Googly-Brain Syndrome! I need to return to my scruffy dictionary. I feel better now. Thank you for sharing.

[Noel]

Guilty of all of this. I could be the poster child for abusing Google. And also calling my husband from my cell phone while sitting downstairs in the family room -- while he is upstairs in the kitchen.

It's just sad.

Thank you for reminding me that there's a better way to live -- or maybe everything in moderation.....