It's not a nice game at all

"Do you play?" the Brit asked?

"Not since I was a kid," I responded truthfully enough, though I left out the part that my croquet career ended when I whacked my sister over the head with a mallet. Jo-Ann loves talking about that incident, which I don't really remember.

Anyway, I got a great croquet lesson from some experts at the UK embassy barbecue.

"The thing is," my coach said, "people think it's such a nice game, but it's really quite a bitchy game. The object is not just to win, but to stop the other guy from winning, which is really quite nice."

Not as good as conking the other guy over the head maybe, but not bad...