Editor’s Note: Our family plays a version of Uno that came to be called “White Chocolate Badger.” Here is the story behind the name, a story that was first told on an Idaho mountain summer morning to a young boy asking for a tall tale while waiting for the sun to rise.Once upon a time, there was a lonely albino badger. He lived in a badger community with a badger family, but never seemed to fit in like the rest of the badgers.
Strangely, the only way that he could get anyone to spend time with him was to allow them to lick his white pelt.
His life motto could have been summed up as follows: If you don’t like me, lick me.
One day, tired of being licked to be liked, he left the loathed life he had led and went to the local city park where he saw a group of children drawing at a picnic table. He came up to them in an effort to make some new friends, but as soon as they saw him, they screamed and ran away.
Alone at the picnic table, he saw the half-finished drawings and decided to give it a try.
As he was finishing up his first sketch, the children (who had hidden behind a nearby tree) crept up and shooed him off.
“Badgers can’t draw!” they yelled after him as he scurried away.
Wallowing in his most recent rejection story, he walked along the edge of the park pond and seemed to hear the baying of an angry hunting dog.
He had never swum but he was more scared of dogs than water, so he jumped into the pond.
To his surprise, he was a rather good swimmer and soon reached the far shore, out of the reach of the dog that wasn’t really a dog but just one of the children acting like a dog.He got out of the water feeling great about his swimming feat, then looked back and noticed a milky white line through the water, tracing the exact path of his escape swim.
He dipped his badger hand into the water, collected some of the white substance, smelled it, and then tasted it.
“White chocolate!!”
A sudden realization struck him. Someone had dipped him in white chocolate as a baby.
Back at the badger community, the badgers were doing their badger things when the lonely badger came running up.
“You guys! Someone dipped me in white chocolate.”
“Oh, we know,” said the badgers.“Well, why didn’t you tell me?” said White Chocolate Badger.
“Where’s the fun in that?” they replied.
Uno.
