Memoirs

Scrabble

The game is on a metal board with its own lazy Susan. It was a Christmas

present a few years back. The letters will be the only things to wear out, and

some of them are ghosts of themselves already, but I looked on the web and

you can buy new ones. We store our old versions on a shelf in one of the

closets. The folded game boards rest in their cardboard boxes with broken

corners, letters rubbed almost clean, scraps of paper with lists of numbers

side-by-side, headed with the names, Jim and Me. Even the good letters to

the old games do not fit in the slots on the new board, a smart move on the

part of the manufacturer, Selchow and Righter.

The game of Scrabble was invented during the Depression by a man named

Alfred Mosher Butts, an out-of-work architect. It didn’t really take off until

the 1950s when the president of Macy’s discovered it while on vacation

and ordered some to sell in his store. Now, it’s reputed that three out of five

American homes have some version of Scrabble.

Tonight, like many other nights, the board sits catty-cornered on the edge of

Jim’s desk in our office area, a bedroom before we became empty-nesters.

Lukewarm cups of coffee sit at the ready beside the little wooden holders.

The maroon drawstring bag of letters waits for the draw as it lays in the

center of the recessed spaces. I pick up the bag and put an index finger from

each hand inside the opening and pull outward. Big enough now, I reach

inside and withdraw an R. Not good enough. Jim draws a D. Jim picks out

his seven tiles, then I pick mine. I cannot resist smiling as I place an h and

an x on my holder. Jim notices. He always tells me I am no card player.

Everything shows on my face.

Mopsy studies us from the top perch of her cat tree nearby, head on paws,

eyes wide open, ears alert. The leopard print fake fur of the tree blends into

her own tortoiseshell coat, weaving a feast of autumn colors to compete with

the falling leaves outside the window behind her. She is more interested

in what we are doing, but any distraction outside can divert her attention,

especially the Lab next door.

It seems too quiet while Jim studies his letters, and I get up to put on some

music. Medwyn Goodall’s new age “Medicine Woman” is the cd in the

player so I punch the power and the play buttons. We discovered this

artist in a little shop called The Crystal Forest off 23rd, a shop of

gemstones, crystals, candles, incense and music among other things. We

never left empty-handed. A reticulated quartz crystal, numerous kinds of

incense, and several Goodall cds drew our attention as we navigated through

the narrow aisles of the forest and its peculiar but pleasant scents.

Soothing sounds come from the cd player as the master mixer incorporates a

vast range of instruments into his music. Jim and I are especially fond of the

pan pipes, an instrument originating in South America in the Andes which

produce the sound of vibrating columns of air inside wooden tubes, magical

sounds.

While I am up, I light an incense stick, and Mopsy comes to investigate

the new sound and smell. She sits and stares at the curling stream of rising

smoke, almost touching her nose to the glowing end but quickly backing

away from the heat. When the closeness of the scent overpowers, she returns

to her queenly perch.

I return to the office with hot coffee and find Jim waiting. He has made

the word “robe” for twelve points. Perfect, since I have no vowels, I add

“hex” at the bottom for a total of twenty-five. Jim is not surprised. But I am

when he uses the r in robe to make zero, taking advantage of the triple letter

score. I should not be surprised, though, after playing so many games with

him. He is the one who is always planning several moves ahead, thinking of

ways to use the special colored squares for extra points and profiting from

the placement of his own tiles. In card games, Jim counts the cards and in

Scrabble he knows what letters are left in the bag.

When Jim was a youngster, he learned to play checkers from his dad, who

was renowned as a local champion of the game. I always turned up my nose

at checkers thinking it to be a silly game with little intelligence needed, but

after playing against Jim, I had a much different viewpoint, especially since

I always lost. Oh, sometimes he let me win, but I always knew deep down.

How else could he keep me interested? Eventually, I got to the point where

my answer was always no, and he quit asking. That is when he took up

Scrabble...after my many suggestions to do so.

I was an English major and was confident that now I would finally win at

something, but Jim’s checker mentality extended to Scrabble. From the

beginning, he won as many times as I did no matter how much I studied that

Scrabble dictionary.

The game continues and the lead jumps back and forth. We’ve played many

different kinds of board games and cards with friends and relatives. Poker

was the entertainment with my Aunt Sadie and Uncle Nick, only for spare

change, but for keeps. Uncle Nick was a horse race fan and poker was his

game of choice in cards. I will not say he was a poor loser, but he was a

quiet one. Our long-ago neighbors, Donna and Bill Horan, played pinochle

as our children played at play. I remember Donna’s chips and dip, a whipped

concoction of cream cheese, catsup, and evaporated milk. It doesn’t sound

that good, but, oh my, it did disappear quickly, and it fit our budget. Like

magic, at twelve midnight Donna and I always got the giggles. No sore

losers there, just lots of fun. Then there was hearts with Jim’s brother,

Howard, and his wife, Betty. Jim and I played partners in these games,

quickly realizing that Howard and Betty had “signals”. We overlooked

it. Sometimes you have to do that, but our card-playing days dwindled to

history.

Games reveal personality traits. I like to win; who doesn’t? But it’s not an

over-powering force with me although winning produces more enjoyment.

Growing up I never played any card games except solitaire and gin rummy,

and Scrabble was a popular pastime with my best friend. I tried to win every

game, but I wasn’t devastated if I lost.

Jim was not a poor loser either, but he approached games in a different way

than I did. He studied them, strategized, “read” his opponents. I would say

he made work out of a game, competing more with himself than with his

opponent.

This night, tiles fill the board and the tally lengthens. The game could go

either way. Jim complains of an abundance of vowels as I concentrate on my

play. I grasp a letter from my rack, then hear a bark and a growl outside the

window. Mopsy, who had been sleeping, flies through the air, lands on our

board, and scatters tiles halfway across the room, ending the game.

We sit a moment. I wonder what is happening with the dog. Jim starts

gathering the tiles to return them to their bag, and I help. There will be other

games.