Catalog Object Watch

by Andrea Berman

When it comes to high-tech gadgets and oddball inventions, the stranger the object, the more likely it is to be featured in a glossy catalog that winds up in your mailbox! Before dinner, distribute your unneeded catalogs to family members and have each person cut out pictures of some modern-day wonder inventions. (Each person is in charge of jotting down or remembering what the objects he or she clipped really do and what they're called.) Then, over dinner, have your family suggest possible names and uses for each picture.

For example, you might turn what was a transparent telephone into a combination fishtank/phone. Then you can compare your creations with the real things- the manufacturers' visions can be as fascinating as yours! You can also have each family member choose an "unidentified catalog object" and "sell" it to the family- the more unlikely the item, the greater the challenge. What could you say to interest your family in a motorized tie rack?

Reprinted with permission from Steve and Ruth Bennett's Table Talk!: 365 ways to reclaim the family dinner hour (Adams Publishing).

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