The Yellow Car© Story

Once upon a time there was a tiny little girl called Chicken who loved to go on expeditions with her Daddy.  These expeditions would take them all over the land of Sydney to pick up and deliver mysterious cardboard boxes which would contain tiny, shiny yellow and green digging machines that her Daddy would sell to excited collectors.

One day they were on a long expedition to the Far West when a very shiny, yellow sports car sped past them and Chicken yelled out "yellow car!" and because it was in the time when they was hardly any yellow cars around, they wanted to follow it.  Now as sports cars are very fast and blue station wagons are not, they tried to drive very fast on a lonely freeway to catch up to it.  

They never caught it.

And ever since then the legend of the Yellow Car began a tradition of the best car game in history, Yellow Car© .

For about 13 years we have been playing this game which is simply points given for every yellow car spotted. If you spot a yellow van, it's double points; a yellow truck or bus, triple points; a yellow helicopter (yes I have actually scored that one), 10 points.

This game has given our family hours of lively competition on long and short car trips.  Admittedly some are more competitive than others and this has developed into a list of rules mainly set by the main driver, Mr Moneymaker.  The rules have been contested fiercely as they seem to change with every spotted yellow car.  For example, cannot award points: if there are an odd number of people in the car; or if somebody is asleep unless it's Nugget; or if the car engine is not running; or if the yellow cars spotted are lined up in a row, say in a car yard.

They go on and have kept growing to the point where Chicken decided that a Yellow Car© Rule Book was needed.  So she created one with all the rules that were already set and extra pages for those that were yet to be created (and we knew there would be more!).

I know that we've never kept a record of our scores (even though that yellow helicopter spotting should have been the winner of all time), but this one I spotted in Akaroa, New Zealand last week should have been the all time classy winner:

(it's even got my species on it!)

This game created by our family has now been passed on to other families and friends so it can grow and spread throughout the land, perhaps one day to become more popular than I Spy (and don't tell me everybody's not getting totally sick of that game!).

So if you're hard up for a simple game to play in the car (it can even be played by yourself, not that I have, ever, no no no), please feel free to go right ahead.  And if you get a little bored of Yellow Car© you can try our offshoot game, Mattress©.  That's where you spot mattresses dumped on the side of the road, if you didn't guess it already.

*Don't forget to check out my fundraising page for Care Australia to motivate me doing 10,000 steps a day with the Digital Parents Conference team.

**This true fairytale is part of Essentially Jess's IBOT.