My best Scrabble story

Good sportsmanship can take strange forms

When I was in high school, 6-yrs-younger sister and I were playing Scrabble one day.

Pretty late in the game, I was saving up to attempt a use-all-your-tiles 50-point-bonus word, with a few good high point tiles. Although the board was crowded, I saw my opening, a lonely "s" that would work perfectly for me.

But it was my sister's turn, so naturally she put down a single tile to form the word "is," for two points, using up that available "s."

Bloody Scrabble tilesI slammed my fist down in disappointment. We had a Scrabble board lazy susan, and that meant, when I calculatedly banged one edge of the turntable, all the tiles catapulted.

At first my sister yelled, but I quickly conceded the game (I think she was ahead anyway), and when I had explained the cause of my frustration, she understood perfectly and we both had a hearty laugh about it.

That's when Mom, having heard my sister's outcry at first, came rushing down the hall and sent us both to our rooms, despite all our explanations that things were fine. (Yeah, Mom was wrong, but parenting is not an exact science, right? At least that's what it says in my Parenting Handbook. In fact, that's all it says.)