Scrabble scars


Today, Internet, I would like to vent my loathing of Scrabble.
'Real intellectuals play board games', my grandmother said. 'Play Scrabble with your mother and me', she said. 'It's your chance for another mind-numbing afternoon sipping lukewarm tea and wracking your brain for three-letter words that never get used in any real context til you either want to throw up or bang your forehead against the wall, or both', she did not add. Years and years of Sunday afternoons around a game of Scrabble, out of guilt, or duty. Then she died, and my mother and I swore to never let the horror rule our life ever again.
We considered placing the game in her coffin before the burial but for some silly reason of inappropriateness or something it didn't happen.
Fast forward three or four years to The Scrabble Holidays.
It was meant to be ten enchanted days up in the mountains, just the girlfriend and me. No television, no radio, no phone, no computer; just the two of us in a little mountain chalet, an unbeatable view on the Pyrenees complete with sheep, and a large double bed. We would hike, be at one with the wonder that is Nature, and fall into bed at the end of a long day; and just be together. It rained the whole time, the temperature dropped to below 8° (in August) and the fog was so thick we couldn't even see the sheep. Hiking was reduced to driving down to the village to buy food and extra socks. We could have piled up the blankets on the bed and given ourselves over to languorous sexual activities, right? Wrong. For reasons I won't even go into, fooling around naked under blankets with her very willing and able partner wasn't on her agenda, then or ever; so she demanded that we play Scrabble.
I bought a game of Scrabble. We played Scrabble. For ten days. At first I tried to improve on the rules by making it a bit more creative: for every word we had to make up a saying; but after the first two games it gave her a headache to try and think too hard, so we reverted back to the normal way. Ten days, people of blogland. And no sex.
I still have the game. Internet, friends, readers, it's available entirely for free to a good home. I'll even throw in a bottle of Tippex to customize the points on the letters; my version is the French one, different letters earn different numbers of points. It's yours. Really. Please have it.
The only happy Scrabble memory I have is last summer's, when, at her request, I showed A how infinitely mind-numbing the game was; she'd never played it and wanted to be enlightened. She cheated, I let her cheat, I still won, thinking 'finally! we share the same values -she hates it too- how I love this woman'. Can't trust Scrabble.