Mum's the Word

My father came up with a fun game for Family Dinner tonight. He told us that whichever of his 3 children and his grandchild could go 5 minutes without uttering a single sound would win a quarter. Since I am a poor grad student in need of any money (even $.25), I buckled down and stepped up to the challenge. Zoe was out before the game even started cause she was serenading her barbie doll while my father was giving the instructions and kept on singing after the game had started. Miguel was out after about 10 seconds cause he's an idiot and responded to a question posed by his wife. So it was down to Sarah and I. And we were both determined to get the quarter. I commenced my underhanded techniques of winning by pretending that I was going to put her new favorite book into the dessert dish of some blueberry crisp thingy but my stepmother plucked it out of my hands. Then Sarah went to get paper and pen and wrote out to my father, "Has it been 5 minutes?". While she was writing I tried to grab the pen to get her to shout a protest but she didn't say a peep and had quite a good grip on the pen. After she wrote the question I grabbed the pen and paper and wrote out, "Sarah is a paper plate. Sarah wears dirty socks." and handed it to my father. He read it out loud to the whole table and Sarah was livid. I'm sure that I almost had her cause she started to open her mouth to squawk out a rebuttal but then remembered she couldn't say anything. It seems that my stepmother tired of the game cause she left the room and then came back and handed Sarah and I each a quarter. I think that my stepmother realized I was obviously going to be the winner and was trying to spare Sarah the humiliation of losing. 7 year-olds can be quite sensitive.