The Maiden Voyage of Spankardy

A long time ago we played Zapardy. Lion got zapped with the shock collar around his balls for every question he answered wrong. We hadn’t played in a while. Sometimes the shock collar wasn’t charged. Sometimes dinner was late and we were eating during Jeopardy. Most of the time I forgot to do it. Lion bought a tally counter and suggested we play a modified version of our football spanking game. The rules would be almost the same as for Zapardy except that he would earn a swat for every question he failed to answer at all. If he got a correct answer there would be no swat. An incorrect answer earned him two swats. But now not answering got him a swat too. Previously, he’d been skating by with very few zaps because he was afraid to answer wrong. That was sort of boring…for me.

I don’t remember when Lion bought the tally counter. It was months and months ago. Before COVID-19? I have no idea. In any case, it just sat there unused. We talked about playing Spankardy but never did. And then last week, there was renewed interest in it. I decided we should have a designated Spankardy day. Since then we’ve been trying to do it. Dinner has been too late. But last night, the planets aligned (did you see Mars next to the moon last night?) and we had time for Spankardy.

Of course, Jeopardy is in reruns right now and always is on Saturdays anyway. There’s always the chance that we’ll hit a show we remember and Lion will know more answers. There’s also always a chance that Lion will know a lot about the categories on any given show. He sees opera and classical music and he’s very happy. I groan. I don’t remember specific categories from last night but I don’t think there were any that Lion was particularly fond of. It was a good cross section of things he’d know and things he’d just take a swat for. In the end, (no pun intended) he wound up with some combination of incorrect answers and no answers totaling 34. This was before Final Jeopardy.

We never discussed how the points would work for Daily Doubles or Final Jeopardy. Can Lion bet points? Could this be a way for him to gain the upper cheek? If there’s a Daily Double in an opera category, he could be down to zero again with a correct answer. Talk about confusing rules. Anyway, since we didn’t decide beforehand, I decided for myself. Once the Final Jeopardy category is revealed, we like to come up with an answer before we see the question. The first time we hit the nail on the head it was amazing. We were shocked. So I decided if Lion guessed the answer before seeing the question, I’d wipe the slate clean. Yes, this was even after seeing that the category was opera or famous classical something-or-other. He did get the answer right, but not before he saw the question. The 34 swats stood.

That’s not a lot of swats by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t do full punishment swats. It wasn’t really punishment. I did make sure those 34 swats were evenly distributed across both cheeks. I probably didn’t need to. I just wanted to be fair. The left cheek might get jealous if the right cheek got fewer swats. Or maybe even if it got more swats. You never know. So I was fair and equitable. And it was over very quickly. I don’t think we’re even warmed up in 34 swats. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to root for harder categories next time.