Do you remember playing the telephone game, also known as Chinese whispers, as a kid? The one in which a phrase or sentence is whispered from one player to another, and usually ends up drastically altered along the route?

A group of college students are attempting to get into the Guinness Book of World Records with the largest game of telephone ever recorded. As far as genealogy goes, that's not the part which caught my attention, however. According to Guinness, the first whisper in the current record-holding game was "They inherited the earth and then the army came and scorched it." The final words passed on were "Mayfield College." This not-so-subtle difference reminds me how important it is to get our family's oral histories in writing, and to check out all family stories and legends. Chances are some of their facts have changed as they've been "whispered" from generation to generation as well.