Greg and I just spent four great days with my mom and dad in Texas, about an hour outside of Austin. No schedule, very quiet ... lots of time for napping, afternoon wine and Scrabble.
My mother is a Scrabble shark.
Over the past four or five years of visits to Texas I had never beaten my mother at Scrabble - until now. I finally realized that while I was growing up and she was teaching me to play nice, preparing me for a community-minded adulthood where I value creativity and pride myself on creating opportunities for others, what she was really doing was plotting her Scrabble domination strategy.
You see, I look at the Scrabble board and want to play a long word that will open up more opportunity for others to play. I look at those seven letters before me and I try to create something beautiful - the perfect word for the perfect spot on the board. While my mother - the artist - looks at how she can score 45 points with one letter.
This time, I finally got it. I chose not to care that the entire upper left section of the board was blank. I played the word WEIRD, capitalizing on mother's "FAKE," which included the high scoring "K." I found numerous other opportunities for those 'one letter takes all' kind of moves. Final score? Bev 301, Mom 265. Ha! Got her!
True to motherhood, she was very happy for me. And she didn't even point out that she was the one who suggested I play ANTSY, which racked up a whole bunch of points.
So what was the lesson learned? Community is wonderful. Creating opportunities for others is still the best way to conduct my life and engage that community. But maybe, just maybe, there are times when I need to make sure I really understand the rules of the game and use them to my advantage. And the experts at the game might even notice my community-mindedness and offer to help me out with the tough spots, even when I get antsy about it.
Thanks mom.
