Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Power up...or down

A friend e-mailed to tell me, now that I am aging, (Well, thank you, Sir!) I should play games that power up my mind. He must have forgotten about the high gasoline prices.

Anyhow, he told me what I already knew. Crossword puzzles, chess, scrabble, sudoku, poker, boggle, dominoes, and other board games. Then, he continued with the advice that I should learn about real estate investing principles.

To invest in anything shouldn't you have cash first?

As to games and sudoku, I'd rather balance my checkbook or add the number of months I have lived since birth. I tried sudoku once or twice and I am not any smarter, believe me. I just came out with an Excedrin headache.

Chess, I used to play in my youth. Then I taught it to my ten year old son. By the time he turned twenty, he became a ranked member inManhattan Chess Club and started to beat me so badly that I was sorry I even brought up the word chess when he was little.

Poker makes my husband to kick me under the table, and I don't like to risk my marriage with his kicking under the table and making his eyebrows dance. As to dominoes, I fall better than dominoes even when I don't mean to.

So I wrote back and asked my friend if he ever tried to write a poem a day. He said that is above his prowess. Ahha! I got him.