This idea occurred to me in chat when several of us were trying to guess the sex of Observing Ego and he/she was being hilariously coy, ala SNL's "Pat".

One obviously important feature of this Internet chat stuff is that identity is so . . . "fluid" and nebulous. As far as I know, OE has never revealed his/her gender. So I thought one amusing activity for the group at the Chase Lounge convention could be a "To Tell the Truth" game (a show I watched as a kid sometimes but which half this board has probably never heard of.:-)) in which we have three Chase Lounge members (two of one sex, one of the other) claiming to be Observing Ego. The object of the game will be to guess which one is in fact OE on the basis of questions propounded to each by a committee of questioners as well as on the answers given by "each" OE.

At the end, just as in the old TV show, the committee and audience members will each vote on who they think the real OE is, and the contest will end with the familiar "Will the real Observing Ego please stand up?", which should be followed by lots of fake movement and preparedness to stand and then a full rise by only the real Observing Ego.

We will need to get two other participants who are well-versed in the psychiatric fields so that they can all respond with some conviction to the inevitable questions that the committee might put forth in order to find the truth. jtod would obviously be a great candidate, although I'm not sure if he/she has ever posted anything from which his/her own gender could be gleaned.

Anyway, just thought this could be a very humorous way to get to know OE and company in person and a fun activity for the convention weekend. Chime in with support or rip it to shreads . . . as you please.:-)

When I was 8 years old, I remember them showing several people all claiming to be professional cooks. They were all holding a fry pan and flipping a burger in the pan. I checked to see which chefs were actually flipping the burgers such that they changed sides when they landed and saw that only the burger flipped by Number 3 was actually changing sides. I reckoned he had to be the pro since the others would only be cooking one side of the burger. Before they even spoke, I announced to the room (filled with adults) that Number 3 was the pro and all the adults were amazed when it later turned out I was correct (after the 5 minute Q&A session).

They asked me to explain how I knew. But I decided I should never reveal the secret otherwise I'd just be wasting the work I did to figure it out. So, I never told them a word.

As I recall, some of them (my aunts and uncles) carried a grudge about that for many years to come.

Heh, heh, heh. Silly adults!

Splishak wrote:When I was 8 years old, I remember them showing several people all claiming to be professional cooks. They were all holding a fry pan and flipping a burger in the pan. I checked to see which chefs were actually flipping the burgers such that they changed sides when they landed and saw that only the burger flipped by Number 3 was actually changing sides. I reckoned he had to be the pro since the others would only be cooking one side of the burger. Before they even spoke, I announced to the room (filled with adults) that Number 3 was the pro and all the adults were amazed when it later turned out I was correct (after the 5 minute Q&A session).

They asked me to explain how I knew. But I decided I should never reveal the secret otherwise I'd just be wasting the work I did to figure it out. So, I never told them a word.

As I recall, some of them (my aunts and uncles) carried a grudge about that for many years to come.

Heh, heh, heh. Silly adults!

So you were one of those precocious kids, that often times "irked" the adults when you made them "look bad"?

Aha, lateral thinking! That's a nice story...
I had a similar thing happen to me when I was about 13, talking to a friend of mine who was a couple of years older than me who had just bought a new PDA. Well it had a password-only section and whenever you put in the wrong p/word it beeped. So anyway my friend heard the beeping and casually said I would 'never' beat the password.

Three girls names later and I was in! He was astonished. I remember his father (who was sitting next to him at the time) saying "now that is lateral thinking for you". I was rather smug from then on, not least because I had now inadvertently discovered which girl in our school this guy had his eye on, which was a great source of amusement for a month or two after that... and I never told his dad what the password was, who was determined to crack it himself. LOL.

Kids!
Why can't they be like we were,
Perfect in every way?
OH! What's the matter with kids today?
Kids!