All the Roadrunning

The lights were dim and flickering.  The sweat dripped from my face, oblivious to the blasts of cool air from the air-conditioner.  It was difficult to think.  My heart beat was erratic and nervous and I could not sit still.  The expectations, the disappointments, the hope, the disbelief…at times it all compounded into an unbearable pressure, forcing me to fidget uncontrollably while trying as hard as possible to concentrate.   

I waited patiently for my turn, trying to keep my eyes focused and my face expressionless.  I knew what I needed to do but there was still time for the person next to me to destroy my plans.  Munching on a stale chocolate chip cookie, a million different scenarios flashed before me. 

Eventually she yelled out “42!”, while smiling widely and nodding her head in self-approval.  I had observed what just happened and as a result I immediately slouched down into my chair, with my head dropping instantly in disgust and my eyes beginning to water.  I knew I was finished.  In one move, my grandmother had crushed my plan, she had ruined my clever strategy for which there was no back up. 

I struggled for a moment to regain my composure, fully aware that I had no one but myself to blame for allowing a sure victory to elude me.  Careless moves and over-confidence gets you nowhere in the world of Scrabble, a lesson I painfully learned this past weekend. 

Not about to completely surrender without a final gasp, I momentarily pressed ahead as if life was abundant with cheerful seven letter words.  But my only option now was to put down an ‘o’ and ‘b’, making the words ‘to’ and ‘bat’ and embarrassedly declaring a pathetic score of 6 points.  I give my grandmother credit though, as she refrained from any snickering or name-calling, instead maintaining her focus and playing as if the battle was still a dead heat.  It is this type of unselfish, composed scrabble playing that proves why she is a champion and I merely an amateur. 

As we played out the last few meaningless rounds, I tortured myself internally by trying to determine where it had all gone wrong.  Yes, I know that had my grandmother not put the word ‘quoin’, meaning ‘an exterior angle of a wall’, with the ‘q’ on a double points space and the entire word in a triple word area, I would have finished her off with the word ‘jax’ in the same spot, earning 75 points.   But did I really think that she would leave such a gem of an opportunity open for me to use?  My unacceptable lapse of judgment produced a measly 6 points and handed her the victory once again. 

During my visit with my grandmother over this past weekend, I was forced to play scrabble 9 times, with some games starting as early as 10am and others as late as 11pm.  She clearly knew what she was doing, attacking me at my weakest times, taking advantage of my post-cruise ship exhaustion and systematically reducing my reasonable intelligence to moldy pudding.  Out of the 9 games, she won 8.   

I did secure one glorious victory however, thanks to the ‘Scrabble Players Official Dictionary’ which allowed me to use the word ‘zineb’ (an agricultural fungicide) on my second to last turn, a word that my grandmother refused to believe was real.  But it was right there on page 897 of that greatest of books, right there in print for all to see, allowing me to taste the sweetness of scrabble victory.  And despite my grandmother declaring this victory to be ‘controversial’ and ‘under review’, I left her home in Glen Cove yesterday knowing that nothing will ever steal this moment from me.   

*By the way, this is not the same grandmother that fed me cole slaw for four straight days a few months ago.  It’s the other side of the family this time. 

I am now in Florida visiting with my mother and sister, having arrived last night courtesy of Jet Blue.  And although I have not yet decided exactly where I will live, I expect a decision to be made shortly.  The choices have been narrowed as I derived at the seemingly reasonable conclusion that I only need a place for one month, just to get myself sorted out.  After that month, I will look for a more permanent place, if I choose to remain in the country of course.   

So for now, I must carry on with my search.  I do thank everyone for your input and ideas of places for me to live and as always, you just might see me pop up exactly where you recommended.    

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 10:11 am and is filed under In the USA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.