A Game of Scrabble

As always, I'm doing my homework. I've always been kind of a nerd in that respect. I do my homework. Unless it's Joe McCarren's Traditional Grammar class, in which case I'll never do it, skip five classes (it was a night class, once a week, you'd think I could have been bothered, but it was a total snoozefest), and pull an A. *shrug*

Other than that, I do my homework when it's assigned. Here were this week's prompts:

1. Complete the sentence "I'd walk a mile for a ________." and continue writing about it.

2. Describe in detail a person who leaves no stone unturned.

3. When out to lunch with co-workers, you bump into a close friend who refers to you by a nickname. Because of its unusualness, the nickname catches the interest of one of your co-workers who asks for the story behind it. Start your story with, "This may come as a surprise, but ... " and end it with, "And that's how I got the nickname (fill in the blank)."

4. Write about an intense game of Scrabble that takes an ugly turn for the worse.

......................................................................................

So, for the not-too-swift of you who didn't read the title of today's post, I'm writing about Scrabble. Unfortunately, I can't say it takes an ugly turn. It was intense, in that it was intensely funny, at least to a bunch of 15- and 16-year-olds.

It's 1995. Possibly early 1996. It was my sophomore year of high school, I can be sure of that. I'm sitting in my Spanish II class with, among others, Amanda, Eric, Lisa, Jeff, and Jeremy. We had a student teacher at that point, I don't remember her last name but I think her first name was Kristen. One day, as an activity to engage us in Spanish speaking, she set us up to play Scrabble but we had to use Spanish words only. As you can imagine, that got old really fast, especially since she wasn't really paying attention. I think she just wanted an easy day.

So we take a notion to start spelling out dirty words. In English. We're hysterical, practically falling out of our seats with laughter (one might say we were LOLing), and arguing over which words are acceptable. I think that's a trend in any Scrabble game. My mother-in-law actually has the Scrabble Dictionary to end such disputes.

Anyway, Kristen notices the ruckus and comes over to see what's so funny. (As an aside, this girl was one of those timid, mousy types who feigned naiveté but you knew was a much more fun girl when the school day was over.) She took one look at our board, gasped, and we delightedly watched her face turn all kinds of red. "No no no no NO!" she squeaked out, and although she was trying to insist that we start the game over and get those obscene words off the board, you could see her stifling laughter. Who wouldn't laugh at the sight of "BOOBS" and "HUMP" on a Scrabble board?

Admittedly, again, no ugly turn for the worse. But it did take a turn and it was intense. I hope Mama Kat accepts this for my assignment!