THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

JANUARY 3, 2023 – When it came to games at our family cabin, my two older sisters led the way, as they did in most endeavors. From an early age, I lost to my smarter elders at War, Go to the Dump, regular checkers, and Chinese checkers—the games of choice, because they were the only ones at the cabin, until Pit and King on the Corner were added to the repertoire. My sisters taught me well, however, because eventually I started winning. By then our younger sister had joined our games—and lost.

Soon, though, Jenny began winning and went on to win big. I remember when our oldest sister, as a young adult, was visiting the cabin. Jenny was beating her badly at checkers (after trouncing her at King on the Corner). Kristina (“Nina”) was feeling so defeated, she began crying. Jenny, ever the cheerful one, said to her, “That’s okay, Nina, you don’t need to feel bad. You still have your vocabulary to fall back on.”

Indeed Nina did—and still does—as the family’s English wizard . . . and Scrabble maven.

Scrabble is now the game of choice at the Red Cabin. My wife and I play it only at the cabin, never at home. She wins 99% of the time, but I don’t feel bad: in an ironic twist, I still “have my vocabulary to fall back on,” meaning that 49% of the time, I manage to talk her out of challenging an obscure word that I stick on the board.

During our long weekend at the Red Cabin, we’ve been playing lots of Scrabble with our younger son, Byron, who, with his wife, Mylène, is visiting from Back East. Though born, reared and educated in France, Mylène has total command of English, as well as French and Portuguese, but she leaves Scrabble to my wife, me and . . . our immediate family’s expert, Byron, who, during his college years, was a 10-minute drive from the home of Nina and her late husband, Dean, and learned at the feet of the masters. Byron plays in the Big League: he “bingos” (uses all seven tiles in one go) on a regular basis and, following his aunt’s tradition, records not only numerical scores but also every word that each player places on the board.

But not all is fun and games at the cabin. Over the weekend, we made a run at a new game that Beth gave the cabin for Christmas: Discovery – [A Game of Survivorship, Starting with Trying to figure out the Directions]. Three of us sat patiently as Byron read aloud each part of the complicated instructions. We gave it the “graduate school try,” but after 90 minutes, including half-an-hour trying to figure out how to start the @!#$ game (I suggested that someone roll the dice to see what would happen, but the eighteen-sided dice weren’t designed for advancing players down the path), we packed it up. The game is already in the back of the car for the return trip home. Beth will promptly list it on Next Door as “brand new; never played.”

Today, among Scrabble games, we’ll play two or three games of Shanghai, a form of rummy, at which Mylène, laser focused, will likely prevail . . . again.

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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson