Im currently at the age where drinking games are part of regular weekend ritual, and i was thinking, did my parents generation do this? how long has this sort of thing been going on? Have any of the same games survived over the generations? Its a tradition, i think, that each generation grows into, and then grows out of again. we are lead into it by the age group that is just a little older than us, and then go on to teach the innocent youth.

there are severl games that i have run into everywhere i go, weather in canada or the states or the uk. Spoons, i think a dirivitive of what i have heard called forks, is a card game where one less piece of silverwear than the number of players is placed in the center of the table, and as soon as one player completes a specified task with ther cards, they take a spoon, and the rest of the players take the spoons as they catch on, and the last person dosnt get a spoon so they have to drink.

there is another game we play called flip cup. two teams are made, and they line up on opposite sides of the table. each player has a cup full of intoxicating liquid placed in frount of them. the first on each team downs their drink, then places it up side down on the edge of the table. they flick it with their finger so it flips and lands upright. as soon as this is done the next player downs and does the same. the first team to get to the last player wins.
then there is beer pong, where you take turns throwing a ping pong ball across the table and try to get it into cups of beer that are lined up in configuration.
then there is the game asshole; it is a card game. rather complex rules.
Sausage is a drinking game, like horseshoes, that i have only seen in rhode island.
there are more but .. thats enough for my point.

so did you guys do this kind of stuff? are some generations more into this stuff than others? It probly has to do with what other teenage fads are at the time.   do any of these specific games sound farmiliar? folkies are probly the wrong people to ask, this is probly more of a frat thing. but i do think that it is a valid form of folklore, weather you personally approve of drinking games or not.   

i also think its very interesting how loosely they are passed on. due to the nature of it all; while playing drinking games you are not likely to remember the exact rules the next morning, all you remember is that it was fun and you want to do it again. so the rules change. in every houseold there are diferent rules for the same game. house rules.

mary