Games People Play (Thursday Thirteen #17)

The hubby and I love to play Scrabble and, in all these years, I’ve never been able to beat him. Not once.

It’s not because I’m not good with words. I am great with the words. In the last game we played, I opened with “GEISHAS” using all of my tiles and getting a 50 point bonus! JW plays with words like “FART” and “PEE” (just to taunt me because he loves the way I roll my eyes when he does that) and I can’t beat him.

After all of these years, two things dawned on me last night (when I lost yet again) that:

#1) We are not really playing Scrabble. He is playing me.
#2) The reason I can’t win is because while I’m great with the words, I’m lousy with the strategy. JW can read me as easy the Official Scrabble Dictionary. He sees my Scrabble “tell” and he takes full advantage.

I can’t blame him. I do the same thing when we play poker. JW is a great poker player in strategy. His weak spot is not having enough patience to wait out the cards. All I have to do is wait for his “run out of patience” mistake and make the move. (shhhh...don’t tell him! This is why I always have poker money in my account and he doesn’t :)

I just can’t believe it took me all this time to figure out that I have a bad Scrabble face. Which makes me wonder what the heck else I’m incorrectly playing in the Game of Life.

Today is Thursday Thirteen...and here’s mine...

Thirteen WAYS I COULD PLAY A LITTLE BETTER AT ALL THE GAMES OF LIFE 1. Like Poker...I always say that I can't cook. The truth is, I don't want to cook. Comparing to JW's poker game, I know the “rules” of cooking and I can certainly assemble the ingredients for a recipe. I am completely lacking the patience to stand there and stir. 2. Like Scrabble... I am great with my words, but not so good with the strategy of arguing. I wait far too long to speak up when I am upset about something. By the time I do, I am usually far too upset to be reasoned with. 3. Like Sorry! ... I know my last Thursday Thirteen was about “shitlisting” people. That rarely happens. I’m pretty good at forgiving people. In fact, sometimes I’m too good at it. 4. Like Trivial Pursuit.... While I may be good at the forgiving part, it’s the forgetting part that I don’t do very well at all! 5. Like Monopoly...if we're playing and you land on “Go Directly to Jail”, I expect the person I’m playing with to follow the rules and act accordingly. Sometimes I think things are this black and white when maybe there is actually a gray area I am missing. 6. Like Tic-Tac-Toe... I know that if I keep putting my opening X in the same place against the same opponents, I will keep playing the same game over and over. I should remember to try to move my opening X with people I seem to have trouble getting along with. 7. Like Charades... I do believe that sometimes I expect people to be mind readers by throwing out clues instead of just coming out and saying something. Obviously, this doesn’t work since I’m the only one who knows we are playing a game. 8. Like Solitaire... I prefer to do things on my own. If I ask someone for help, which is almost never, it’s a pretty desperate situation to me. I should probably learn to ask before it gets that way. 9. Like Pin The Tail On The Donkey... one of these days I am just going to accept the fact that there are things in this world that I don’t know a horse’s ass about and that’s fine. I don’t have to be able to do everything myself. 10. Like Battleship... A big part of Battleship is learning from your mistakes or incorrect guesses. Most of the time I do, but like with how I argue, some things just never change. 11. Like Chess.. In chess, you are supposed to protect the king at all costs and realize that some of the pieces are certainly more disposable than others. In real life, each one of us is our own king and I think I worry too much about protecting the disposable pieces while leaving my king wide open. 12. Like Checkers... Look before you leap. Enough said. 13. And just like Clue... I was given a big one yesterday! How on earth did it take me 41 years to figure all of this out? I told you, I can be dingy at times. Who said blogging wasn't just as good as therapy? Ohhhh, it must have been the psychologist in the office with my check :)

And just to play the guilt card...if you love me, please click here and vote for my blogging buddy, Jessica Morris. She is trying to get enough votes so that she can get paid to blog for a year and she's almost there. You don't have to blog or register or anything like that to vote. You just have to click!!!


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