Slugging Bugs and Punching Buggies

It took less than twenty-four hours following Scott's permanent arrival in Austin for us to decide that playing the Slug Bug game (Punch Buggy for the Canadianers out there) in its purest form was not going to be a viable option. It turns out that there are too many slug bugs in Austin, and aside from bruising up one another's arms, it interrupted the flow of conversation to point them all out.

For me, this was a fairly positive development. I never had any brothers, and in my family, people could generally be trusted to keep our hands to themselves and keep the violence to a minimum as we traveled from place to place.

When Scott and I were first traveling back and forth to visit one another, I'd spend the first couple of days of each visit forgetting about the game entirely, and getting slugged rather frequently until I remembered to keep an eye out. Once I did start paying attention, though, I could pretty well dominate the game. (Then I'd leave and start seeing slug bugs everywhere, and have no one to slug for them.)

When we traveled to Vancouver for Scott's troublesome visa interview, we were so tired from walking everywhere that we'd just acknowledge the punch buggies verbally without bothering to throw the punch at all. That quickly turned into my most efficient defensive maneuver: call the slug bug so it can't be called on me first!

Back in Austin, the game has evolved a little bit over the last month and a half or so. For a couple of days, only vintage Beetles counted for a slug. Then we thought to convert it to more unusual 'bugs, like convertibles or ones decorated like a ladybug. Eventually, we moved to a dynamic and slug bug ruleset. According to the Scott and Rachel Slug Bug/Punch Buggy Guidelines, we pick a color theme each day and can only punch for Beetles that fall within that theme. Sometimes, we pick a color, like blue, and other times, we pick something more creative, like fruit or vegetable colors. For those, naturally, we have to identify the fruit that we're color-matching, and we can only claim a fruit once.

And so the slugging continues, if on a more reasonable basis, and we can carry out a normal conversation when driving in the car.

Sometimes.