Shelby Nichols Consulting

Recently, Chris and I were invited to a game night at a neighbors’ house. There were eight people who came and we all brought treats. My best friend Holly and her husband were there, along with several others from the neighborhood.

We had a great time socializing and catching up with each other’s lives. Most of them had seen my photo in the paper recently about an incident at the newspaper, and I got lots of questions about my premonitions.

Since I didn’t want my friends to think differently about me, I explained it as intuition, or a hunch, and that I’ve learned to listen to that part of my brain. No way did I want any of them to know my real secret that I can read minds. They accepted my explanation pretty well, and it was a relief to be off the hot-seat.

Soon, it was time to start the games, and someone bought out an interactive game they were really excited to play called The Resistance. They explained it as a social deductive game where you’re either Imperial Spies or Resistance Operatives.

At the beginning the moderator tells everyone to close their eyes. Then he tells the spies to open them and see who the other spies are. They then close them, and then the leader tells everyone to open their eyes and the game begins. With eight people there are three spies and five resistance, so it seems a little stacked against the spies, but since they know who everyone is, it evens out.

If you are with the resistance, you don’t know who is on your team, or who to trust, and the spies are always lying and saying they are part of the resistance. The leader picks people to take on missions which everyone votes on. This is part of the strategy and discussion to figure out who is who. If it passes they run the mission and this goes on for five rounds.

When the mission is run, the spy can sabotage it. If that happens, you know that someone on that mission is a spy. So you try different combinations of people to go on the missions so you can figure out who are resistance and who are spies. When one of the teams wins three missions they win the game, and you start over with new roles.

This game is great fun unless you’re a mind reader, and you know who everyone is. It wasn’t so bad being a spy, because we always knew everyone’s roles anyway, but my competitive nature always over-ruled the fairness of knowing who was who, so I knew the spies right off the bat, and, unless I was on the team, they always lost.

Then, as a spy, I always knew what the other team was thinking about who might be who, so I could play to their strategies and deceive them with lies. It bothered me just a little that I was so good at lying, but not enough to stop. Needless to say, I was always on the winning team.

A couple of the guys weren’t happy with that, so we played some other games. One was called Code Names. I tried really hard not to cheat, but when someone thinks about a  word you’re supposed to guess, and gives the clues for that, I can’t help but pick it up and shout it out.

Once again, my team always won.

Chris kept telling me in his mind to stop listening and play fair. I really tried to do that, but it’s a lot harder than you’d think.

Later, after one of the couples left, someone suggested playing a few rounds of Texas Hold’em. It had been a while since I’d last played poker, and I couldn’t hold back my enthusiasm for the game.

Chris shot me a warning glance, but I ignored him. We weren’t playing for money, so what was the harm? It ended up being a lot more fun than the other games for me, mostly because it wasn’t so cut and dry. I did end up winning all the chips pretty fast, and I was declared the king of poker.

I didn’t mind too much, but the hosting couple was thinking that they weren’t going to invite me and Chris to game night… EVER again. That kind of hurt my feelings. But, on the bright side, at least no one accused me of cheating.

As we left, one of the women suggested that Chris and I try to get on one of those game shows. With me in the mix, we’d probably win everything.

We all laughed, but her husband was already planning a trip to Las Vegas. He was thinking about paying my way, and ready to put down his life’s savings so I could win him a few million dollars playing poker.

He never said it out loud, but once he got the logistics figured out, he’d come up with a plan. He thought he’d have to split the winnings with me so I’d go along with it, say…80/20, but he could do that.

Before he got too carried away, I spoke up. “I could probably make quite a haul in Vegas, right?” They mostly nodded. “Maybe someday I’ll enter a poker tournament, but for now, that’s the last thing I want to do. Too much pressure… you know?”

He mostly got the message, but he wasn’t about to give up the idea.

In the end, I don’t think we’ll get invited back to game night.

I know there has to be a solution to that. There are lots of games out there where reading minds wouldn’t matter so much in the outcome. If I can find some of those games and offer to bring them next time… it could work.

If there is a next time.