The one new name I don't mind is "companion animal" because I think that reflects the closeness of the bond

If I read/hear that, I will assume that the animal is a seeing-eye dog or other helper animal.

I tended to not like playing "I Never" in college, because everyone would tell their sexual escapades but I didn't have much to contribute on that subject.

But once playing "I Never" while drunk (of course), I said, "I never masturbated in the Arctic Circle Watershed and threw my used Kleenix into a river so it'd end up in the Arctic Circle."

I knew "spade" was derogatory, and we had a Sambo's restaurant in my hometown when I was a kid, and even at 8, as a little (freakishly advanced reader) kid, thought it was really weird, and I didn't like eating there.

(We ate there twice. The second time, I was all "Isn't sambo a mean word for a black person? I don't like this restaurant." AND the food sucked. They didn't last very long, in the late 70's.)

Heh. I loved "I Never" because I knew all people's shit and would say things on purpose that they had to drink to. Not Deep Dark Secrets, just slightly skanky ones.

And I cheerfully drank to anything I'd done.

I've never played I Never. What a waste of sexual escapades.

Tevis Cup: riders climbing Cougar Rock.

Yikes.

My *god* I loved I never. You get to totally frame yourself exactly as rapacious as you want to be, and learn shit about your friends. That and "One of these sentences is true." Or whatever that's called.

The best was the month or so when purity tests were all the storm, and we all answered every single variant I could find on the fledgling internet, but only shared our scores (one person read out the questions, but we only wrote down our progressive scores every ten questions, to hide which answers we were making). One guy scored in the low 20s before we all started doing stuff specifically to lower our scores. He was regarded as unto a god.

Bless university. Best money my parents ever spent.

I always like I Never better than Truth or Dare, because dares always scared me.

That and "One of these sentences is true." Or whatever that's called.

Two Truths and a Lie, I think.

Oh, lord. I played "I Never" all the time in rugby, and a few times in Peace Corps (that's one way to get to know each other quickly. and get drunk quickly).

I knew the spade thing. I didn't know that phrase was ever NOT racist.

Poor "spade is a spade." It spent hundreds of years with the humble goal of having people avoid euphemisms and fancy language, only to get caught up in a controversy having nothing to do with garden utensils.

In my youth, "black as the ace of spades" was often used for anything very black. For example, "His clean shirt was black as the ace of spades when he climbed out of the coalpi.e." I don't know at what point spade slipped into the bad company of spic, raghead and their evil friends.