wink raze you ever play this game when you were in school or hanging out with friends? it originated as something called "wink murder" — a party game where someone is assigned the role of a killer, and they eliminate the other players one at a time by winking at them. if you're the killer, the point is to wipe out everyone else. pretty simple. if you're one of the potential victims, your job is to work out who the killer is before they can get to you. you can make an accusation at any time. if you're right, you win. if you're wrong, you die. the variation we played was called "vampire". i have no idea why we called it that. it should have been called "squeeze murder", because it was a handshake that dealt the killing blow. we'd pretend to be a bunch of people introducing ourselves at some fancy social function. the killer would squeeze the hands of their victims in a very deliberate way. if you got that squeeze, you'd finish exchanging pleasantries, walk away, wait about five seconds, and die in whatever ridiculous dramatic fashion you desired. i don't think i ever got to be the killer. it didn't bother me. dying was the best part of the game. one time i screamed, "oh god, i forgot to tape 'melrose place'!" before collapsing. some kids had such firm handshakes, you'd think they were killing you when they were just trying to shake your hand like they meant it. so you'd end up dying for no good reason. at least there was a solid meeting of hands before you hit the deck. that's a rare thing these days. 211212 ... nr we played both versions of those games, but they were called "murder wink" or "murder handshake." they were fun, but i was the opposite about the dying part; i was shy and uncomfortable drawing attention to myself, so i never died in a dramatic fashion, but also worried that would look boring. sigh. i wonder if, post-pandemic, people will permanently stop playing the handshake version. 211212 what's it to you? who go blather from