People: Grandma B., Brothers-in-law Sherwin and Chris, Brother Hudson and random others.
Situation: Sherwin and I have been playing each other a rousing, albeit frustrating, game of Scrabble via our iPhone apps called Words With Friends. I am usually very good, but happen to be stuck with many unusable combinations of letters, along with unsatisfactory placement options. You must understand; I don't play 'dot', 'play' or other such low scoring words unless I have to and / or there is significant score-able points to be had by playing such lowly words. I am fiercely competitive. Well, no, my mom plays fiercely, I am perhaps very competitive. So you can understand my pain when I had no available placements longer than 4 letters, or scoring more than 16 points. Bare with me. Sherwin you see had already achieved the "50 Point Bonus" once during said game, and was about 100 points ahead of me just whipping out awesome words left and right ((AHEM Cheater?? cough cough)). I jest. We are non-cheating fellow word-lovers. So, during this great heavily attended family birthday party we sat on the couch behooving my fading ability for great game play. When Grandma and other family members chimed in to look at my letters -- in the sole position of offering condolences for lack of great word choice and not (in any way, shape or form) to give advice let me reassure you dear reader.
Well, getting everyone involved in my poor plight caused stir for playing a real board game of scrabble. Now my family does still have (ahem) 10 kids still living under the parents roof; so games of any sort are short lived and even if they do fare better than the rest, they rarely maintain complete-ness of which Scrabble necessitates. It was hereby agreed upon that Sherwin and I would journey to the not-so-distant land of Wal-Martopia and buy the aforementioned game. But being as we were at a family birthday party, presents and a cake we must have. Then of course a baby we must feed. Finally upon completing our dues we are able to escape to Wal-Mart land. We bring the tag-a-long gang of Oh-High-Father, Second brother-in-law Chris and my dear adorable hubby (who happens to look like this right now...sigh). We cram into a little tiny car and head out. Arriving at said big box store we meander about for quite a bit (you try to get 4 grown men in and out of a toy department without stopping to appreciate "action figures" and Nerf footballs, making fun of silly girly dolly's, and critiquing the latest safety hazards labeled as toys). Finally locating the board game territory we search for Scrabble and find there are (of course) 3 types. Well the cheapest also happens to be the deluxe and even though we were really just desiring an original version we couldn't find one and couldn't beat low price of $15. I pick up some vacuum parts on the way out and as I'm paying I realize the register reads +$60!!! I know that the vacuum parts I got weren't nearly $40, and even if they were that still wasn't right. So I check how much the Wal-Martopian rang me up for and the game came up as $34. ACK!! Not exactly how much we were wanting to spend on a spur-of-the-moment purchase. So to make my story a bit shorter it appears that there were actually 4 types of Scrabble that they carried and this lovely "Deluxe" version was placed in the out of stock area under the detailed description of "Scrabble Game" while the deluxe space was several spaces down, lacking any sort of item on it's shelf. So again, long story short, the manager graciously honored this mix-up and we finally walked out of that land victorious and anxious to get home to play.
That's when it all went down hill in a rapid fire anti-climatic sort of way:
On the way home I receive a text message from a friend whom I'd promised to hang out with that evening asking when I was coming over. Much to my surprise and bewilderment it was 6:45pm and since the sun was still very much out and shining it had not even occurred to me how late it really was. So here was the dilemma: The baby needed to go down to bed pronto, my loyalty to my friend (who had just come back from Jamaica...!) and if, if, we did decide to play a quick (yeah, right) game of scrabble then that'd mean the baby would go down for that nap at my parents house, and we'd be stuck there for another 2 hours minimum. Too late to make good on my promise to socialize with dear friend. So dear hubby and I made executive decision to hightail it out of there and once dear baby was down in her own bed I'd fly the coop for much needed non-dear-baby socialization. I offered dear Scrabble interested family members the ability to keep my game and play without me, but being as I was the driving force behind operation play Scrabble, the concept lost it's luster and dear family bowed out of the hypothetical word war.
Here is the clincher. Dear brother-in-law Chris offered to graciously bestow his unused copy of original Scrabble on me due to my keen interest in the game and reiterated this offer as I vacated the premises with the enticing reminder that I could also return new Deluxe Scrabble and get my 15 bucks back since I could have his version of the game. Then when I got home and glanced at my game center in the office, I also already have an original version of this cursed game. Now I have 2 copies, and one being offered to me, and all after scoring a sweet non-existent deal from that big box store, and none of them used and rousing hypothetical game still very hypothetical.
like my use of some big words in there don'tcha??
And that game I was playing with Sherwin? Lost, of course. I guess I can let him have one every once in a while.
