When I was younger I had a thing for stuffed animals. No, not like "a thing", but in true young girl fashion I thought stuffed animals were the end all, be all of cool. I had an endless stash of plush which was dominated by my comprehensive Pound Puppy collection. Something you should know about my Pound Puppies is that they all had names, voices and specific rolls. They were a family, but not just any family - they were the McPuppies. We (my brothers and I) developed this name after the beloved Marty McFly of Back to the Future, so of course there was his stuffed doppelganger Marty McPuppy. With the character profiles in place we were primed to play "dolls" with my "Loveable, Huggable Puppies who need a home"
The fun was not limited to those of the puppy persuasion though. There were others that joined in on the action, first and foremost a pair of stuffed, bean-bag sheep that had a Laurel & Hardy thing going on. They spoke in an incoherent dribble of "Bah bah-bah bah, BAH-BAAAAAH!!" You think I'm kidding.... I'm not. And all the animals lived in the happy existence that we made for them, working at McPuppies (that's right, they owned a restaurant) and just being cool. There were slow times, and in these slow times the puppies yearned for something more. We obliged. So we devised a game show for the pups to play. The game show was called "Wham That Lamb!" and went a little something like this:
The two lambs (one was named Lamby, and I'm not positive but I think they both might have been named Lamby) were hung by shoelaces in my brother's closet. We then rubber banded mouse traps to a board and propped the board against the back wall of the closet. The stage was set, and all we needed were some participants from the audience. Bruiser, Marty, Biff, Whopper, they all took turns answering "questions" from the host, and if they answered correctly (which they always did; my pound puppies were no fools) then the host/audience (my brothers and I) would all scream "WHAM! THAT! LAMB!" and the player would hit the hanging lamb as hard as they could, launching Lamby and/or Lamby toward the mousetrap. If the trap was sprung, and an appendage was caught in the trap the contestant would win! If the trap was not sprung.... we would just keep trying until it was. And thus "Wham That Lamb" was born, and the three of us discovered another way to misspend our youth.
Thanks mom and dad.
