Don't eat the raisin

"Don't eat the raisin" used to be one of my and Lucy's favorite games, but now I only play it with Lisa. Lucy is too good at games. I always loose.

The rules are simple. You each put a raisin in your mouth, and the one that keeps it there the longest without eating it is the winner.

I'm taking Lisa to school in the morning and have a hand full of raisins, so I give her one and, popping one into my mouth, challenge "Don't eat the raisin."

Lisa puts the raisin in her mouth, accepting the challenge.

Okay. I said the rules are simple. But there are tactics.

You can pretend you've eaten your raisin, hiding the raisin under your tongue and showing the opponent an empty mouth. Thinking they've won, they eat their raisin, and then "Surprise!" the raisin comes out from under your tongue.

We get to Dae-hyon park. "Did you eat your raisin yet, Lisa?"

She shows me her raisin, clenched softly between her teeth.

"Here, look at mine..." I say, reaching my hand out as if holding something. I quickly turn the hand over and make a grab for her raisin, but she is too quick, and closes up her mouth.

That's another tactic. Or maybe a rule. When someone shows you their raisin, you can pick it off their tongue and eat it yourself. Then they lose.

I guess it was silly of me to start a game of Don't Eat the Raisin at the start of our walk. A good game can take an hour or two, the walk to Lisa's school only takes 12 minutes. Even when she dawdles.

"Lisa." I suggest as we come to the gate of her school. "Keep track of the time when you eat the raisin. When we get home, we'll figure out who the winner is."

"Sound's good, Daddy!" she says, and goes into the school.

As soon as I start walking back to the University, I eat my raisin. I have a pocket full of them, and I am just going to stick another one in my mouth when I get home and pretend that I've kept it in my mouth all day.

That's another tactic. Cheating. Take advantage of your daughter's implicit trust.

I pop a raisin in my mouth as I leave the office at the end of the day. It needs to have swollen up a bit to be believable. I don't know what a raisin looks like after a day in your mouth. But you can tell a fresh one from a 10 minute old one. When I get home, I hide it under my tongue and ask Lisa, "What time did you eat your raisin?"

"At about 9:45." she says. An hour and 20 minutes.

"Not bad." I say. "Did any of your classmates see it."

"Nope. They don't know about Don't Eat the Raisin. "

"I didn't last that long." I say.

"Oh?" She asks. "How long did you last?"

"About this long!" I say, showing her the raisin on my tongue. "Boo-yah!" I yell, eating the raisin.

"Wow Daddy!" she says. "That must have been hard to not eat the raisin through lunch."

"Yeah." I say. It probably would have been.

"Cause look what happened to mine at lunch time," she says, showing me a bloated raisin on her tongue that has gone so light that it is almost white. "Boo-you!" she says.