“Banana Yellow!”  Fourteen-year old Becky taps her friend’s arm and peers out the car window, looking for more yellow (or mostly yellow) vehicles.  Everyone sees the next one, and my car is suddenly filled with shouts of “Banana Yellow!”  It’s a race:  whoever sees it first, says it first and taps someone first gets a point.

Those are the rules Becky made up when she decided it had to be a game.  She was just riding along with her family somewhere about a year ago, she said, when she saw a bright yellow car.  She spontaneously shouted “Banana Yellow!” and hit a sibling (not hard–just enough to make it fun), and the game Banana Yellow was born.

Among our friends, Banana Yellow has become a staple.  We play it when we’re carpooling to football games, church activities and family parties.  I even play it sometimes with my grown-up friends when we’re out shopping together.  (It’s amazing how many Banana Yellow cars you see when you’re eating McDonald’s or driving and can’t really do anything about it!) 

I was surprised yesterday to learn how far the game had spread.  I was babysitting for a friend, and her very young children played it between their house and ours.

According to Becky and her family, the game of Banana Yellow works like this:

1. To qualify as a Banana Yellow, the object has to have wheels under it.  This includes bikes, skateboards, and boats on trailers as well as cars and trucks.
2. The person who sees something Banana Yellow, yells it and taps someone else first gets the point for that vehicle.  That particular vehicle can only be used once.
3. If the Banana Yellow item is going backwards, it’s worth two points.
4. If the Banana Yellow item is a Volkswagon bug, it wipes out all the points for everyone, and the game starts over.
5. People wearing yellow shirts and riding on bikes or skateboards don’t count.  The mode of transportation itself has to be yellow.
6. A little bit of yellow on a vehicle doesn’t count.  It has to be completely yellow or mostly yellow, like a Schwan’s truck or a DSI van.
7. Semi trucks count if the semi is mostly bright yellow.  The trailer doesn’t have to be.
8. Make sure you know your colors.  Some construction machinery and school buses are really more orange than yellow (one family we know doesn’t count construction machinery at all).
9. Cement trucks count if the cement mixer is bright yellow.
10. You can tap the roof of the vehicle you’re in if you don’t want to tap anyone (or if they’ve made it clear that they really don’t want to be tapped).
11. If you get bored with Banana Yellow, try Lime Green.  Strawberry Red doesn’t work out so well because there are just too many red vehicles on the road.

The game is pretty versatile.  Rules vary from family to family, but they all started out with the basic ones Becky decided on when she created Banana Yellow.  It’s good family fun, North-Dakota style. 

Banana Yellow!