Baby, I love you, but I just can't smile

A few weeks ago at my friend's birthday party, we played a game I haven't played since about second grade, called "Baby, I love you, but I just can't smile." In this game, one person goes up to another person and says something along the lines of "Baby, if you love me, please smile." The "victim" then has to say the name of the game without laughing and/or smiling. If they laugh, they have to do it to someone else. And so on and so forth.

While my memories of playing this as a second-grader are somewhat blurry, playing it in a group of 16/17-year-olds was definitely different, to say the least. I've always found it amusing to watch, because it's somewhat funny to watch people try and be as comically romantic as possible within the bounds of good taste. Unfortunately, I've conditioned myself to laugh whenever I'm nervous, so I ended up "it" pretty quickly, and I realized I had no idea how to do this to somebody else. Even though I consider myself not entirely naive with regards to sexual matters, it's extremely uncomfortable and unnatural for me to actually participate in even mocking them.

Another game that seems popular among the teenage population that are tough for aces is "Truth or Dare." Arguably this shouldn't be hard in theory, but anyone who has ever played Truth or Dare with an average group of teenagers has witnessed the tendency of players to go straight to "the good stuff;" i. e., the questions about "liking" people and having sex and all that jazz. The problem is, there seems to be a disinclination among teens to believe that it's possible for a person to not "like" someone constantly; Truth or Dare was actually what led me to making up the crush I pretended to have for a good four years. For aces playing with non-ace participants who aren't sensitive to asexuality, the game rapidly becomes either a disappointment or a case of denial.

I can only imagine how horrible playing games like "Spin the Bottle" or "Seven Minutes in Heaven" must be for aces, thankfully having never experienced them myself.

On the other hand, the one game that we do have a decided advantage with is "Never Have I Ever..." Dominating this game works best when playing mostly with people have been sexually or romantically active, but you can still knock a lot of fingers down with "Never have I ever had a crush on a boy...or a girl...or anybody else..."