5 Enduring Lessons Hiding in Scrabble Games With Grandma
Resilience, patience and self-reliance one tile at a time
I don’t like Scrabble. Who wants to think during leisure time? Give me Go Fish or Candy Land any day. But Scrabble? Make up words without the necessary letters? Unravel the confusing scoring system? Sit in silence while smarter people spell words with Q’s but no U’s? Try inqilab, kamotiq or niqaabs — you’re welcome.
I started playing Scrabble when I was eight. Not because I liked it, but because my grandmother loved it. And I loved her. I walked to her house after school because I had no cell phone (not invented yet), no close friends, and only two Atari video games. My grandmother would drop whatever she was doing. It was my time with her alone — no cousins, parents or church ladies vying for her attention. If I was lucky, Scrabble was accompanied by a heaping bowl of peach cobbler.
I was horrible in those early games, and forty years later I am not much better. But those Scrabble games taught me valuable lessons.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help
As much as I enjoyed spending time with my grandmother, I dreaded the inevitable when I couldn’t find any words to play in my tile soup of vowels. After an eternity, my grandmother would say gently, “I’m sure…
