Ok, the photo may be kind of small, but this was one of the best Scrabble games I've ever played. I used all of my tiles AND spelled the word facade AFTER my grandmother used the d in deli to spell mid. Because MA and ID are in the scrabble dictionary baby!!
The board came out well balanced. Not too much over to one side or anything. Everyone scored over 100, another amazing feat. And no one had to hold on to Z or Q or X for more than one turn. At least that I'm aware of.
What was the magic behind this fantastic game? Grandma turned 91. That had to be it. How else could so much brain power have found it's way into her tiny little kitchen on that day? I figure by this time she's got to be harvesting energy and brain power from some unknown source. She may not be one of those people who runs 5 miles every day of their life or has mastered Tai Chi at 80, but her brain is this unstoppable power.
She wrote weekly "Remember When" columns for the local paper up until a year or two ago. She still writes in weekly with a letter to the editor that is inspired by some current event. She's teaching her friends how to Tat (that's make handmade lace, and I don't mean crochet), and even considered volunteering at the local school to teach kids how to knit and crochet.
Only one thing stopper her. "What would I have in common with someone in high school?" she asked me. I had no reply. I'd love to spout some heart warming message that the generation gap can be bridged simply by her willingness to teach. (She was a teacher for most of her career.) I'd like to think that the kids who would be interested in learning would show her some respect and patience. But the skeptic in me isn't so sure. For crying out loud, I don't even know how to relate to high school age kids. It's hard enough to work at a college sometimes and understand why these people do what they do, and why they look at me like I'm never going to understand what it is they are all about.
It turns into some bad stand up comedy about how I "used" to be cool. When in reality I never was cool. For a short while I wanted to be, y'know. High school, middle school. But then it occured to me "these 'cool' kids, they have no concept of what's funny." Laughing at something just because it's peppered with profanity or has a fart joke. I'm not saying that profanity and farting can't be funny AT THE OPPORTUNE MOMENT. But give me some Monty Python (which I didn't understand for the longest time) or some Wallace and Grommit or some Syphil and Ollie. It's a different language to most people. Heck, it's a different language to my grandmother. She just sits and shakes her head when my brother and I get going. It's like the only bonding ritual we have at holidays, see how many times we can make some out there reference that makes gram shake her head and say "there they go!" Right after she's done banging her flat ware on the table and singing "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness" that is.
So I guess we each have our own.
Imagine a room full of high school students sitting around this 91 year old woman as she teaches them to crochet and how to sing "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness". They'd think she's batty. With right, mind you, batty as they come. But she's fully aware of it, and of all the years that she's put in to perfecting being a tweak in the works. So it surprises me when she's concerned that she wouldn't have anything in common with the high schoolers. I'd think she wouldn't care.
And she could beat all of their high school butts at Scrabble.