Scrabble...

We are irreverent in this house. 

I could add qualifiers as to what we are irreverent about but it's pretty much everything. 

The news was all over the NEW Scrabble this week. Fox thinks they've gone "woke" because official tournament Scrabble and the official Scrabble dictionary have dropped some offensive and derogatory words. Which, I mean if you want to play by the plantation rules, you go on ahead, nobody is in your home making sure you don't say or spell the n word. As you well know, Fox News...

And a lot of people are up in arms over the new version of Scrabble they are releasing that is easier. It's designed more for team corroboration instead of individual competition. It has cards to make it easier to make words. They are trying to bring in more people to play by making the bar lower. 

When I saw the story about the easier I thought of Brent's mother. The woman loved Scrabble. And I could just hear her saying "Instead of making it easier, how about you get smarter?" And then I laughed thinking of the jokes we would make about sending her the easier version because the last time we played I beat her. 

Brent and I were talking about the new easier version this morning and his mother. And he said, "though maybe she needed it since she lost." And then he said, "Too soon?" and I had to tell him what I had thought and laughed about.

Then we talked about how it must make her a restless spirit that the last time we played Scrabble she lost to me. I am not sure but it's quite possible that it was the first time ever that I beat her. Brent thinks I beat her a few times over the years, but I don't know. I am not good at Scrabble. I like words, but I'm not great at spelling. And she (and she taught it to Katie) would do that dirty twisty way of playing that would box off the good letters and spaces on the board. I mean, it's not dirty, it's in the rules, but when the only word you can see you can't play because you've been boxed out it's dirty. 

And the last time we played was when we were home for my mother's funeral so I was out of sorts. I was distracted and sad, of course, and I still won. Which might have been why I won. I wasn't overthinking it. Just relaxed into knowing I was going to lose and it would eat up a few hours in the day and then...

I can still see her face as she went over the board again and again trying really hard to be a good sport about it but...she did not like to lose. She did not like to lose at Scrabble. And she did not like to lose to me most of all. 

So yeah, we would have joked about sending her the easy version, but we never would have. And eventually I would have succumbed to the pressure for a rematch so she could beat me soundly. 

But that's not going to happen. There won't be another game. 

So I will always be the Reigning Mastenbrook Scrabble Champion!