It's official. She is ready. My baby is ready to leave the nest. She just beat me by 99 points. This is a first. For her. For me. For the record book. She and I have been playing Scrabble since she was old enough to spell.
In the early days she was hopeless. She would play weak 2 and 3 letter words with no concept of strategy on the board and would get so frustrated when I would crush her with 32 point words played off of her lame moves that opened the triple for me. I did feel a little guilty back in the day about stomping on her like that, but it was my plan.
NO mercy! Not even when she was 6. Her father was appalled that I would be so mean. He would pull me aside and tell me to let her win. NOPE! No way. No way was I going to let her think she was winning when she was not. It was my intention to give her a reality check. A metaphor for life I figured. No falsehoods. No bullshit. Learn how to win. Perfect your game. Too many kids were growing up thinking they were the be all and end all when really they were just average kids. She was going to know that if she wanted to win, she was going to have to learn the game if she wanted to win.
Tonight all my efforts paid off. She has won before, but never by such a margin. She was elated. Secretly, so was I. She is smarter than me. Just as strategic, and motivated to win. This is a good thing. The next decade will challenge all kids her age. She is about to head off to first year university next week and she will join the throngs of kids her age who will graduate in 2016. It won't be easy for them. The world is changing fast and by that time, who knows what will have transpired in this crazy world.
She will need to be clever and strategic and motivated. No one will have an easy go of it unless they have a family business they can walk into, or they are the creme de la creme of their crop. The challenges will lie before them like track hurdles, each one more and more difficult to clear.
I don't know if our years of Scrabble games will help her all that much...but I reckon they cannot have hurt.
Congrats my sweet girl - you blew me out of the water tonight...and I am still smiling. :)
7 letters - 50 extra points - Pffft! And no, Vexs is NOT the plural of Vex! And you won with losing that challenge too! Be proud.
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Congrats Em! I played with a friend last week and she got 223 points on one word using 7 letters, and got another 7 within that game, I shall not tell you what I got................Aunt M.
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