With all the studying we do and working hard to manage our life, who doesn’t enjoy a little escape into being fun and crazy? This year my daughter and I participated in a wild and crazy event called GISHWHES.
GISHWHES is the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen created by Misha Collins, also known as Castiel for all you Supernatural fans. For one week at the end of the summer you are given a list of fun and crazy tasks for your team to attempt. Each team is made up of 15 members. You can form your own team, or allow GISHWHES to put you on random teams.
One of my friends from high school talked me into participating. For me, this was my second year. It was only my daughter’s first. On day one, we glanced through the list to see what we thought we could accomplish. At the beginning there were 198 tasks. They ranged from simple good deeds to wild and crazy tasks.
We wrote down the ones we thought we could do and even a few that we weren’t sure but sounded like a lot of fun. Most of the good deeds got claimed quickly. By the time my daughter and I were able to get onto the site to claim tasks the main ones left were the crazy ones. As the week went on, some tasks got deleted for different reasons. As those were deleted others were also added.
GISHWHES gave my daughter and I an opportunity to spend some quality time together. We got to do all kinds of crazy things. At one point I even found myself sitting in a chicken pin with a picture of Marcel Proust (a famous author) attached to my own face as a mask. Another task I had to have someone help me do a panorama picture of myself doing three work tasks as if my boss wanted me in three places at once.
Some tasks required a little more involvement. We had to recruit other people to come help. Twice we came to campus in hopes of a crowd joining us for our tasks. The first day we needed “Tree Huggers” to literally hug the trees on campus, and some protesters to help bring awareness to the number zero to show that “No Zeros are Trivial” and that “All Zeros are Equal”.
The second day we arrived on campus was for a “Zombies vs. Vampires Nerf War.” I honestly think this one was the most fun. We had an amazing person help with the makeup and then we got in our positions for our “war.”
There were many more tasks we completed from completing an “escape GISHWHES” computer game, to trying to submerge a fake, severed foot in Jello, and even making the stuffed animals around the house misbehave by doing more than just making messes.
It has been said that this was the last year for GISHWHES, but only time will tell. After all, Misha is known to surprise you and have other meanings of what he says, and he actually said, “As we know it.” So here’s hoping for future years of GISHWHES. For more information on GISHWHES, visit their website at http://www.gishwhes.com/.
Callie Logan
Clogan@lc.edu
