The Garden of the Blind

Once, at an activity for young single adults, I got together with some friends to play some croquet. It’s a nice game that I hadn’t really ever played before, but as much as is possible for someone as, well, awkward as me, I did well. There was one girl, though, who just couldn’t seem to get the hang of the game. So, she would get help from the other players, particularly the guys. Halfway through the game, we noticed that she was showing no improvement. It then dawned on us that she was deliberately playing poorly just go get some attention.

At that point two things happened. First, we stopped helping her physically with the mallet. We’re all for touching girls, but we won’t be manipulated into doing so if we can help it. Second, the incident passed into the vernacular, so that any time a girl was pretending to need help so that she could get attention, she was “playing croquet.”

The only thing I’m left to wonder is whether croquet is derived from cricket. I leave it to fans of Douglas Adams to draw their own conclusions from there.