When Were The Vikings On Mars?

It's amazing how you can take teenagers to a cottage and, all of a sudden, they become totally different people.
They don't miss their laptops. They can, surprise, surprise, live for a few days without having to go on Facebook for all the scandalous news: What is Jenny doing after work? What show is John watching from 8 to 9 p.m. They can play just five games of Guitar Hero a day.
But even more surprising is that they will, happily, play games: Monopoly, Catch Phrase, Guess Who?, euchre, uno, Clue.
Last summer, the kids discovered a dusty old purple box in our game chest called Balderdash. I remember my parents playing it when I was kid and I remember I didn't really understand it. It was an "adult game."
Last summer, the kids dragged it out of the chest and I warned them I didn't know much about it but I was sure it wasn't going to be much fun.
Wrong.
It's fun because it is an adult game. We laughed so hard we cried.
And we laughed even harder this year.
Balderdash is a language bluffing game. One player looks at a really hard word, one that you've never seen, much less pronounced in your life.
Think of words (these are fakies) such as: beamershed or sulkeynutsyed or fortmensyyakah. The game gives you the real definition of the word and all the other players must come up with a definition. If a player believes your fake definition is the real definition you get a point. (Just to point out here: I, Sarah Crosbie, won the Balderdash game, against my much older and more successful fiance. He may be a language genius and a National Newspaper Award winner, but I beat him in Balderdash. By a lot. A landslide. Ha!) Um, anyway.
So, we're all playing and let's say the word is beamershed because I honestly can't remember the real, impossible word.
Definition No. 1: A Welsh dance performed mainly on the heels
No. 2: A small African rodent
No. 3: A beach changehouse
No. 4: A piece of a window wiper
No. 5: A mineral discovered on Mars by the Viking Probe.
I knew it wasn't definition No. 1 because that was mine.
And I was sure it wasn't No. 5 because when the question was read, I heard: "A mineral discovered on Mars by the Vikings." I thought one of the kids had made it up and they were being silly.
When all was said and done and the round was over, the Fiance admitted that the Mars definition was his faux definition.
"When were the Vikings on Mars?" I asked, at which point he burst out laughing, so hard he sounded like a girl high on High School Musical 2. He didn't understand that I was being sarcastic - not stupid.
"What? The Vikings got in their ships, with their furry pointed hats, and rowed themselves to space?" he howled.
"Did the Vikings invent space travel?" he howled even more.
"One small step for Vikings, one giant for Viking kind."
This was going too far.
I swear I thought the clue was: "A mineral discovered on Mars by Vikings" not "A mineral discovered on Mars by the Viking Probe."
Like I said, the game isn't funny.
At least when people are laughing at you, not with you.
Just as a reminder though, I won the game.
Ahoy mateys!