By now, a national game of Simon Says should be concluded and participants headed for immortality in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Please … please, save the applause until after the presentation. Thank you.
The Goddard School, a private preschool with a location in Southlake, contributed to the attempt, dare we say record, at noon Friday when at least 25 people — mostly students, probably — gathered for a rousting game of Simon Says. They joined four other Goddard campuses in the area, and more than 12,000 people across the United States, to compete for the record of most people playing a simultaneous, coordinated game.
The attempt was no child’s play. Southlake’s Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Pamela Muller served as the offficial witness at The Goddard School in her burg, and things get serious when politicians get involved.
The serious factor escalates when one considers Simon Says an educational exercise, and the owner of Southlake’s Goddard School, Val Patel, certainly does.
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“Games like Simon Says can help children improve their self-regulation skills through listening carefully and following directions,” she wrote in an e-mail message.
Although the official count remains a week or two away, let’s make an assumption here. Three hundred seventy-five schools united on the Guinness front. Working long division, 12,200 divided by 375, equals 32.5 people per campus. The Southlake Goddard School enlisted 28 people, and it just opened this year. Patel said some schools had more than 100 people play.
So let’s make the unofficial call and say, yup, they broke the record.
Now, about that applause …
Bruce Felps owns and operates East Dallas Times, an online community news outlet serving the White Rock Lake area. He sucked at Simon Says as a kid. Never has liked someone telling him what to do.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NBC, NBC 5, NBCDFW.com or its employees.
