Last Friday, my friend from work and I took a Mystery Art Class through the Eagan Parks and Rec. I was really excited because I had never taken this class before, and the description sounded fun! We would show up at the Eagan Art House for a night of creating art, wine, and light refreshments. How could that not be great?!

It was fun, but it was nothing like what I expected. I thought we would paint, draw, create pottery, do a mosaic or something like that, where we would end up with a finished product to show off to our friends and family. And maybe even be exposed to some art medium I’d never used before.

Instead we played a game. It was a mash up between Apples to Apples and Pictionary. This is how the mash up worked. The instructor pulled out a green card that had an adjective on it. The participants (that was the group I was in 🙂 ) were given seven red cards that had a noun on them. We had to pick the noun that we thought best described the adjective that the instructor had chosen. Then we had to draw our adjective. We were given anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes to draw our cards. I think most of us were a bit panicked that we wouldn’t be able to finish in time, so we all drew really fast and didn’t get more than 5 minutes after our initial 10 minute time limit. But 5 minutes was more than enough time to get a general idea across.

I thought it was a very inventive idea, and it made Apples to Apples more fun for me, since I’m really not a big fan of that game. I think I would have liked it even more if I were playing with people that I knew, instead of a room full of strangers. I had some cards that would have been funny to me and my friends, but to people who don’t know me and don’t know that I like to joke around, I could have offended someone. Not that I’ll probably ever see any of these people again, but I don’t like to offend people unless I’m trying to. And it’s pretty rare that I ever try to.

I got stuck with some pretty difficult cards the first round. I had Steve Martin, Celine Dion, and Cher. Luckily, nobody had to guess who it was that I had drawn!

So even though it was not what I had expected, I did have fun, and I’m glad that I went. But I don’t know that I’ll be going back again.