The Magic of Chickenfoot

If you read the title: The Magic of Chickenfoot, and wondered if I'd been delving into Voodoo, fear ye not. The Voodoo I do is no more than the Voodoo you do.
Sorry about that sentence. It was just too fun to pass up.

No, Chickenfoot is one of the games you can play with Dominoes. My parents taught my wife and me Chickenfoot a dozen or more years ago. And a few years after that, we introduced it to my daughter, who's now 16. She's always gotten a big kick out of it.

When we go out and visit my West Texas parents every few months, the Chickenfoot games we play are one of the few places where I see my daughter act like a 16 year-old acted when I was a kid.

Teen-oriented Television is a fabulous HOW-TO network where they are taught to be sullen, demanding and self-centered to a "T." While teenagers may or may not be able to pull off good grades, may or may not be able to make the team, may or may not have a clean room, nearly every last one of them is fully capable of believing at any given time that the universe does in fact revolve around them.

Ah, but a spirited game of Chickenfoot, wherein all that matters is getting rid of a domino that will penalize you tremendously...and the sullen teenager disappears to the other end of said universe, and is replaced by a smiling, laughing, kid.

Unlike when my daughter rides her horse or competes on her Acro-gymnastics team, my plus and minus 80 year-old parents were competing on the same playing field with her. And last night after almost 2 hours of Chickenfoot, my nearly 82 year-old dad beat us all at Chickenfoot.
Not reflected in the score though, was my win. I got to see my daughter, whose life is so very unlike that of her grandparents, share some great moments with them. And sharing those was worth a little Voodoo...even if no chickens were sacrificed in the process.