Flaming June in San Diego : NSC 2002
PART ONE
Odd that when I went to the Arden Cup in Chicago at the end of May I was dealing with the debacle of my daughter's preschool teacher getting fired. Almost three months later Mari Anne has decided to open her own preschool (at the encouragement of so many of the Sunny Hollow parents) and the week before the Nationals I found myself in coveralls from noon to five, painting a preschool building out in Mendota Heights. I would drag the kids along, promising a fast food lunch if they kept the whining to a minimum. The two year old was exempt of course. He got his happy meal and whinged too. Many of the parents who encouraged Mari Anne to open her own school were suddenly absent when she needed them. All week long it was just Mari Anne and I painting. She would stop occasionally and look around at the purples and greens we had slapped over the walls and take a deep breath, "Oh Stephanie! It's looking fabulous." And I would swipe at the paint splatters on my cheek and look over her shoulder and think, "How in hell are we going to get this finished by September 3rd?" One day Randy Geller stopped by to speak with Mari Anne. She had to leave early though and I was the only one there. My 9 year old was sacked out in a corner with a gameboy pressed to his nose. My 6 year old girl was rambling through one of her never ending soliloquies inside a closet. The door was open, you could see her feet, and, of course, hear her. My two year old son was naked, I believe, and quite filthy, a combination of playground dirt and paint, running around in some sort of Lord of the Flies manic way just as Randy popped his head in. I kind of knew Randy from Sunny Hollow. We had never met, but I knew that he was a distinguished business man in St. Paul. He was dressed in a crisp suit and very shiny black shoes. He smelled lovely. For one brief moment I wasn't at all painfully aware of what we looked like to him. I happily took in his perky neatness and perfumed aura. "Hi, is Mari Anne here?" His eyes scanned the room. Nate and his gameboy, Jo mumbling in the closet, Henry brandishing a fly swatter, running circles around the paint buckets. "Um, no she had to leave. I'll see her later, can I give her a message?" Turns out Randy stopped by because he was still on the fence regarding the new school. He wanted to grill Mari Anne a bit and figure out if he should come and join the project. "So you're in this for good?" He waves his hand across the room. I could faintly hear Jo say "You heard what I said young lady! Now get to your room!" from the closet. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am." Henry hurts his finger on something and drops his fly swatter and comes running up to me. I grab him and hold him on my hip while Randy and I chat about the new school. I kiss Henry's finger, but he keeps whining and holding it up to my face. Randy looks at Henry and says "Do you want me to kiss it?" I raise my eyebrows. Henry thinks for a moment, then sticks his finger out for Randy. Randy kisses Henry's finger and asks if I'll be at the board meeting on Friday. "I'll be out of town." I put Henry down and he runs and finds the fly swatter. "Oh, vacation with the family?" Jo sticks her head out of the closet and asks who's here. "No, actually, I'm going to San Diego by myself." Nate lets out a short whoop--"Mom! Usually you can't get to level 15 without a garnet charm but I did it because I had enough potions!" I'm pretty certain Nate has no idea I've been talking with a stranger for the last ten minutes. "By yourself?" Henry is whapping Jo over the head in the closet with the fly swatter. I nod slowly, "Yeah. SCRABBLE® tournament." Randy is worried about Jo for a second but when I say 'SCRABBLE® tournament' he looks at me. "SCRABBLE® tournament?" "Henry, we don't hit people with that, only bugs! Yes, I'm going to the National SCRABBLE® tournament in San Diego." Johanna sticks her head out of the closet again "You said we shouldn't kill bugs, they are living things!" "Yes Jo, you shouldn't just kill bugs to kill bugs, but flies are okay--" "There is such a thing as tournament SCRABBLE®?" Randy is looking amused, as if I told him I were getting ready to leave for a mud wrestling tournament. "DRAGONFLIES????" Jo asks, knowing they would be exempt. "No, not dragonflies! Yes, there is...tournament SCRABBLE®." Randy looks over at Henry still smacking Jo with the fly swatter and Jo screaming "I'm a DRAGONFLY...I'm a DRAGONFLY... you can't KILL MEEEEEE", then over to Nate who has become one with a 5x7 plastic box, then back to me in my coveralled, paint splattered glory. He nods his head slowly and bites his lip. "Well, tell Mari Anne I stopped by." And backs out of the room as if I were holding a small caliber gun to his stomach. "Nice meeting you." And maybe I just imagine that he sprints over to his Mercedes. "You too Randy!" I wave. Henry runs up behind me and wags the fly swatter back and forth,"Byeeeeee!" NSA take me away. Back to topPART TWO
One of Lorrie Moore's characters in one of her short stories is a lonely, thirtysomething woman who is flying out to NYC to visit her sister. She has a fear of flying, but her trick for getting through the flight is to realize how pathetic her life is and how many awful choices she's made and how really there is nothing so great happening in her world that she would miss out on if the plane were to crash and burn before she made it to La Guardia. She goes on to mention that the only flaw with this method is that when the plane lands on time and safely she needs to try and find things to live for again. I'm not a huge fan of flying. I'm not sure what gets to me most mid-flight, thinking of the 39,000 feet between me and the ground or admitting that I am stuck in a small tube with 250 people squished in all around me sucking in the same pool of stale air that I am for three and a half hours. There is that fear of heights thing and that claustrophobia thing wrapped up in one neurosis. My consolation prize during my flight to San Diego is that the only other person I know who has more neuroses than I do is my travel companion. Friday morning we were forced to sit at the gate for two hours while they announced on the half hour "Ladies and gentlemen we appreciate your patience regarding the delay of flight 194. We're still looking at those engine problems and once we get those under control we'll have you on board and in the air in no time." After the second announcement Mary turns to me and whispers "As long as they fix it." Amen sister. Two hours later they decide to give up on the gimpy plane and send us to a new gate where, hopefully, a plane with a little less rust under the hood awaits. We then sit on the tarmac for a half hour and then taxi for what seemed another half hour along the tarmac. Mary nervously fiddled with the air vent above her head. "God, I hate this, they don't have the air on yet, we've been sitting here for hours." Her fluttering fingers land momentarily on her chest. "Jesus, I can't breath." I give her a sidelong glance and then close my eyes again. I'd like to offer some encouraging words but I'm pretty busy encasing a golden white light around the fuselage with steady, cosmic breaths. I learned how to do this in a yoga class some years back and so far it has saved dozens of doomed flights. I'm breathing out the cosmic light and we're taxiing along. Mary takes out her book and stares down at it as if it were some imposter book and not the book she lovingly packed in her bag earlier that morning. The guy next to me taps lightly on the window. He is staring down at the tarmac and tapping to the beat of some tune running through his head. I'm just about finished building the force field and start to sink into a hazy sleep. Before I nod off I turn to Mary and ask if she knew we were driving all the way to San Diego in a DC10. Mary doesn't SCRABBLE® at all, but she has two small children and a husband and we both share a love for getting away on occasion and a love of solitude with the occasional bit of togetherness for reality checks, and we also happen to be excellent drinking buddies and travel mates. Mary came to the Dells tourney with me last October, and when I mentioned the San Diego trip back in February and told her I managed to get very reasonable rates on lodging she agreed to come along. Mary actually hates SCRABBLE®. I might have something to do with this. Years ago I used to force her to come over to my house when Gary was out of town, after the kids were in bed, and I'd open a bottle of scotch and light a roaring fire and set up the SCRABBLE® board with comfortable chairs and a table right in front of the fireplace. It took me a while to notice how more and more time would drag on before Mary would draw her tiles. The way she seemingly had no concept of how much time she was taking to play and possibly only cared about whatever trivial bit of news or gossip we had been chattering about (filler!) until finally one night the snow was falling hard the scotch flowing freely and Mary looked up at me and asked, "Is it okay if we never play this game again?" I tried not to look too hurt. I mean I certainly saw it coming. There were signs. The times I would mention that maybe a word she had just played was not acceptable and the way she would draw her lips into a thin line and hiss "Whatever." I suppose I should be grateful for Mary cutting me off like that. It was not too long after our last game that I finally decided it was time to find the local NSA club and try it out. I think Mary is happy I found the NSA. I am off her back now. Not only that but she has regular excuses for leaving her family behind for a couple of days here and there throughout the year. Mary and I didn't spend a lot of time in San Diego together. Every night she would meet the Minnesotan SCRABBLE®rs at around 6pm over at the bar next to the tournament room and have a few drinks, find out what my day was like. I would ask about hers, always feeling a bit guilty that I was in San Diego and was not spending my days at Mission Beach or Balboa Park or strolling through the zoo. Mary would sit and listen to all of us rant about close games and falling point spreads and recounts and bad racks. I was having a cathartic moment one night recalling a recount I had just finished. My hands were flying, my face flushed, I was speaking too quickly for people to follow. I look over and catch Mary's eyes. She's giving me the look, the faint smile that screams HUMOR HER. I stopped midsentence. "So. Mare. Did you make it to the beach today?" One of my favorite moments of the week was when I asked Mary to walk with me to check the boards so I could catch up on all the players standings. "I think Anne is having a bad tourney..." But Mary waves her hand through the air, "Oh no, she's doing great now, had a much better day, I think she even has positive spread." I turn and look at her, "Really? Positive spread?" and laugh. "Yep." She shakes her head up and down, "Now Joe's having a bad tournament...." By the end of the week she had all the lingo down. She had met all the freaks. One night we were sitting at the watering hole and the rest of the group had gone off to dinner, Mary and I were waiting to meet people in the lobby for karaoke. Mark and Harriet had come up and we were drinking beer and looking words up in the dictionary. Matt Graham walks up with somebody else and is rambling through some self-centered diatribe about his game and how he knows he's brilliant, but he isn't sure if he should continue to play. I am curious about how Marlon made out for the day. Last I spoke with him he was in the running. I try and interrupt Matt once, then twice, "How did Marlon do?" The second time he hears me but it doesn't really compute. "I don't know..." and he continues his rant. I get up to go to the bathroom. When I come back Matt is still standing over the table rambling. Mary gets up and we head for the concourse lobby. "Who is that?" she asks. "Oh, that's Matt. He's in the book too." "What's that scar on his neck?" "Oh, that's in the book too, was never clear actually." Mary shakes her head. "Yeah, that boy is unstable." I laugh. "Ya think?" Mary holds the door open for me and looks over her shoulder in Matt's direction. "Hey, it takes one to know one and let me tell you there is one live wire." By the end of the week Mary even finally agreed to read Fatsis' book. I'm pretty sure she still hates SCRABBLE®, but I think it is a love-hate relationship now. Back to topPART THREE
I went to high school in San Diego. I lived in Los Angeles for 13 years before I moved to Minnesota 11 years ago. When I lived in L.A. I would occasionally get down to S.D. to visit old friends, but it has been a long time since I've seen downtown. The San Diego Mary and I lived in for a week during the NSC is definitely the new and improved version of the city. When I was in high school we used to take the bus out to what was then called, I think "Horton Square." The heart of downtown. A red light district. Prostitutes and drug dealers, deteriorating buildings and dirty sidewalks, trash and hopelessness everywhere you turned. Sort of like New York City without the good food and culture. Horton Square was a sad excuse for a city park. A concrete square in the center of the city with some benches and a bit of dying grass and an old fountain, which was gray and choked with litter. Pigeons were everywhere. When I was sixteen we would take the bus to the square because it made us feel mature to sit and chain smoke in the park and cruise by the adult book stores and X-rated theaters and buy tchotchke from the funky stores we felt secure enough to enter. So what did the good people of San Diego do to turn around the misfortune of their floundering metropolis? They built a mall, of course. I'm not sure what came first, Horton Plaza or the Gas Lamp spin, but they built them and people have definitely come. Our hotel (and I use the term loosely) was about a mile out of the Gas Lamp Quarter. I was actually grateful for the distance. The mile walk was enough to give me some interesting exercise everyday and also enough to keep me away from my shabby accommodations. I only walked back for lunch once during the week. The rest of the time I just hung out down at the Concourse until somebody interesting or game or both came along and then I'd wander into some sort of night life. Since it was all SCRABBLE® related Mary usually went back up to the hotel after drinks. One night she was brave enough to accompany about ten SCRABBLE®rs to dinner, mostly Minnesotans, and Stella came along too. We ended up at the Rock Bottom Brewery, which has pretty decent food. I knew this before we arrived unfortunately, because it has pretty decent food in Minneapolis as well. Every now and then Stell would announce how happy she was to be dining at the ROCK BOTTOM brewery. I found the hotel, which had an amazing rate of $250 for the week. Actually, I had the "suite". Some of the rooms were as low as $200 for the week. When I found the place I shared it with my club mates, so a group of us were staying there. Walt was the first to arrive early Friday morning and Mary and I were right behind him. The rest arrived on Saturday. When I walked in the room the first thing that hit me was how small it was. I had the biggest room and it was about the size of my bathroom at home. There was a decent size closet though (whaddya know) and a small fridge, people like Walt actually put food in their fridge. Mary and I had a nice selection of Chardonnays and Fume Blancs. Club mates Mary and Bobbie were on our flight and as we all got off the plane I asked them what they were up to for the evening and Bobbi laughed and said "Well, first we're buying some wine." I told them how I have a drawer full of wine openers at home because everywhere I go I always forget to pack one and end up buying one. Mary grabbed my arm and said "Just leave it in your suitcase. That's what I do. Just always leave one in your suitcase." I told her that was a great idea. Though I wouldn't share it with too many other people. The next thing I noticed about the room was how I would pretty much never be walking barefoot on the carpet. Then I noticed the dirt on the shade pull. Then I saw the upholstered chair with all the stains on it. Walt came over for a game a little after we arrived and I put a towel on the chair before I sat down. He laughed. "I'd be okay if it were plastic, you know?" Walt sat on the bed and me on the chair and walls were directly behind both of our backs. When I let Walt into the room though he gasped and said "Oh. You're room is much nicer than mine!" I apologized and he waved me off. If I had my choice of all the guys in the world to travel with, Walt would be at the top of the list. I give Walt a ride to club every Tuesday and have gotten to know him a lot better this year and he is a delightful companion. He teaches Italian and French over at Hamline University and he's well read and articulate and has a contagious passion for life. He wears flamboyant batik and floral shirts with sandals and when he speaks it is always like this little invitation to get happy. He has four grown children, one of them with CP, who has decided to become a professional comedian. His other children live in Korea and Spain and NYC and teach languages as well. Walt always packs a little wine every night he goes to club and usually has a cooler full of exotic food to eat. One night I think it was pickled eggs. After my trip to Nationals I am thinking that the shrinks over at Healthpartners should prescribe Walt to people like me instead of Wellbutrin. That first night Mary is tired and wants to read and crash early so Walt and I decide to head over to Old Towne. I have eaten at this wonderful mexican restaurant many times called Casa De Bandinis. We are down in the lobby trying to figure out how much it would cost to take a cab when some guy wanders in who is clearly enjoying his evening and slurs "Or you could just take the TROLLEY." Walt and I look up at the desk clerk. He shrugs. "Really? How do we do that?" I close the phone book. "Just walk down about 8 blocks and jump on, taske you right there..." He's trying to light his cigarette. Both Walt and I look at the desk clerk again for some sort of confirmation but he just shrugs again. "How late do the trolleys run?" The guy looks up at the ceiling, "Well, tonight is Friday, oh I'd say one or two..." I look at Walt and he is game so we head down to the trolley. There is a Korean guy who speaks very broken English who is going to USC and is just visiting San Diego who teaches Walt and I how to buy tickets for the trolley. Walt has just returned from a trip to Korea to visit his son and as the three of us knock knees on the trolley on the way to Old Towne Walt keeps making this guy jump a little in his seat and say, "OOOOhhhh---yessss, yessss, you know that!" Of course Walt DOES know how to pronounce all the cities and sites correctly and also has his passion for life charm at the ready and completely wins this guy over. We all resist hugging when we finally arrive at Old Towne. Finding Bandinis is no problem it turns out, but there is a long wait. Walt and I end up upstairs on the balcony, outside, with these huge margaritas and the mariachis singing below and the California stars above, and the soft scent of mock orange wafting through the air.... and this honking stack of flashcards that I have brought along with 8's on them that Walt is adamant about getting a good chunk down before we get seated. STONIER...HEAVY ROCK JUST PLUNGES BY..... We make our way back on the trolley around midnight and there are plenty of people sharing the ride downtown with us. I feel as if I've been transported to some other life. Walt and I and the latino family behind us with the tinny rap coming out of their small boom box. The woman across from us with two boys, one about 10 the other about 7. The 7 year old sleeps on the 10 year old's shoulder. The big brother looks tired, but serious. Too serious for a ten year old. For a minute I miss my kids. Walt starts to tell me about when he lived in Paris for a while though and the trolley stops at fourth and we walk up the empty streets of downtown San Diego...the night is still and warm and I have seven days of anything I want in front of me. Yes. Back to topPART FOUR
We wanted to do the beach on Saturday. We even walked over to the Long's in Horton plaza so I could buy a beach towel and some flip flops and then the sun never came out and a friend of mine from L.A. decided to drive down and visit me. I used to date John's brother when I lived in Pasadena about (yikes) 15 years ago. For some reason John and I have kept in touch (in the most minimal of ways) over the years and I don't hear from Tom at all anymore. John works for the AP bureau in L.A. and when he heard I was coming to S.D. for a SCRABBLE® tournament he was shocked ("I can't believe you play tournament SCRABBLE®!" he emailed me after hearing about my trip to S.D. "John, Neither can I. I can't even SPELL."). He grilled me about the tournament and then asked to read some of my color reports. In San Diego we had a three hour lunch at some tiny restaurant on 4th Ave. He informs me that he has sent a reporter to cover the tourney. "It's something that all Americans would be interested in." "It is!" I nod my head emphatically. Maybe too emphatically. "When I heard you talk about 'vowel dumps' I just knew it was something we had to cover." There was some talk online regarding the proper attire for the reception. It was very much wear whatever you're comfortable in. Apparently some guy was comfortable in a skirt, black furry boots, oversized fake boobs and a t-shirt that said "Nice Rack." Several days later when I came out of the tournament room after the first four morning games there was a guy standing in the lobby wearing a purple wig and tutu, fairy wings and huge green glasses. I assumed it was the Nice Rack guy, but as it turns out it was Jim Kramer's birthday and his family back in Minnesota had arranged for a singing telegram. The birthday fairy had Kramer wearing a tutu made out of balloons and a balloon tiara which reminded me of the hat that poodle wears at the end of Go Dog Go (NOW do you like my hat?)and Jim, being the droll sweetheart that he is, was singing and dancing around in circles whenever the fairy told him to. I heard Les Schonbrun say something about it being a little too loud (the fairy was pretty out of control) and I immediately wondered when Les's birthday is. Now THAT would be entertaining. Because John hit bad traffic on his way down we didn't eat lunch until late. I had had a couple of bloody mary's and when I arrived at the reception I was not hungry (a combination of the late lunch and excitement at meeting some of my online buddies for the first time in real life). I passed on the big buffet and Mary and I went straight for the Chardonnay. Definitely should have eaten something. I was actually pretty okay. Maybe one too many hugs with Marlon. Other than that I was fine. Marlon and I have been in touch via email for about a year. Nothing regular or in depth, but we've said 'hey' here and there. He has emailed me some nice comments after reading my color reports. I quit CGP for him. It's a symbiotic relationship. When Marlon walked by me during the reception I had an easier time knowing it was him than he did for me. The only black man there. Hmmm..let's see...who could it be? He saw me looking at him and slowed down, was not going to stop and then saw my name tag. I was trying to figure out why he looked so shocked. We hugged and he kept saying "Tha's you? I don' believe it!" One time when he responded to my color report he compared me with Erma Bombeck. When he shook his head in disbelief and said "Your toes is painted and look at that thing around your ankle! Damn!" Gee Marlon, what did you expect? "Not this!" and he laughed. I'm 40, but not dead, okay? Another highlight was meeting Cheryl, STELLA, for the first time in the flesh. We have been yakking via email for about a year now too and when I walked up to her and gave her a hug I felt as if we had known each other for a long, long time. She's even sweeter in person than she is online. We would schmooze a bit in the morning (she made me walk blocks to get her a proper breakfast one morning) and had a nice dinner at Rock Bottom on Tuesday night. I had invited Stefan over to our house for dinner when he was in town for his book tour and he couldn't make it, but knew who I was from that and was nice enough to introduce himself at the reception and say he was sorry he couldn't take me up on the offer again. Stefan is adorable, but that little 12 pound girl he hangs out with sort of steals the show. At the Awards ceremony on Thursday they sat in front of me and he had her over his shoulder and that little bobbly head and those drooly lips and saucer eyes had me jonesing for a big baby squish. One night at club I was telling Anne and Sue how we call my almost 3 year old 'the baby' but that really doesn't seem right. Anne says "Oh he'll be the baby for a long time I'm sure." And then she grabbed my arm "Well, I don't mean to get personal, maybe he WON'T be the baby for a long time." I laughed a little too loudly, "Oh YES HE WILL. He IS THE BABY." Those tubes are tied very tight, but still, you see these squishable bambinos and know what got you into three of them after all. Sort of. Stefan ended up behind me in line at Brugger's one morning and we made some polite conversation. I asked him about the baby, and he asked how many I had. I told him three and he said "Oh, wow." I nodded my head slowly "Yeah. Not sure what possessed me to have the third one, but it seemed REALLY important at the time." Evan Berofsky was another nice find at the reception. He and I have chatted a bit online and it was fun to actually squish him in person. Evan was entertaining throughout the tournament. His tourney reports are great fun to read, but it is so much more fun to hang out with Evan at a tournament. We didn't really hang out. We bumped into each other, but it was always entertaining for me. Details later, I promise. Jim Fonti played in my division and we met for the first time at the reception. We had been playing online games for almost a year. We had this brother/sister relationship going and then I left playsite and lost his email and we were out of touch until a mutual friend in NYC went to a tournament with Jim and somehow I came up and they both figured out they knew the same person. It was also nice to meet Bob Gillis in person. Generous and sweet. He's kept me in word lists for the last several months and every time I go into a tournament I feel like I need to do well just to show him how it makes a difference. There were other friends that I had seen at local tourneys and some I sort of glanced at from afar. Joe Edley talks about wanting to be the ambassador of SCRABBLE®, and yet, we've had several in depth conversations but since I'm a division five nobody I would never warrant a hello. In fact I joke with club mates about how Edley gave me the finger when I was in Vegas to observe the World Championship. Kramer and Edley and I were standing there looking over Kramer's board after a game and I could sense that Jim was wanting to move beyond his last game and chose that moment to introduce myself to Edley (we had some lengthy email exchanges just before I left CGP) and when I said "Hi Joe,I'm Stephanie Steele..." and put my hand out to him he raised his index finger at me to shut me up and then asked Jim some pressing endgame question. Mary and I make our way back up to the lovely West Park Inn around 7:30. It doesn't happen very often, but I'm actually drunk. I crawl into bed at 8p.m. and wake up promptly at 5a.m. Just one hour before the curfew is lifted and the jets start roaring by my window. They come so close I can see people waving from the airplane windows. It's actually wonderful therapy for a fear of flying victim to listen to SO many big huge planes come in and land safely, one after the OTHER. I'm still on Central time and this is the first day of a 31 game tournament and I am coming off two very bad tournaments back in March and May. I'm pretty sure if I don't do something decent at this tournament that I should consider a new pastime. Maybe Yahtzee. Back to topPART FIVE
The Games. I hope you'll forgive me for not reporting on all my games. There are better games and more talented players who have probably filled your curiosity regarding NSC games. My fans (both of them) have made it clear that they expect unmitigated emotional fluff with a bit of SCRABBLE® content to make it legit. I aim to please. It was something. Walking into that tournament hall and finding my table among 175 or so and then watching as more and more and more people filed in and found their tables and this room is enormous and the gigantic SCRABBLE® board is up front and all these young, hip looking people are sitting in front of computers in various stations and it is clearly an OPERATION. It's like Houston. Only we never had any problems. I emailed Mr. Williams privately and Yvonne as well to say thank you and would like to say again what an amazingly smooth show they put on. Please don't ever quit your day jobs. Bob S. posted online just before the tournament his contest calling for submissions that explain what these thousands of tiles sound like rattling in their bags all at once. I kept telling myself days before the event that I must remember to listen and to think about what that sounds like. When Laura told us to begin our games though, I didn't hear a thing. I went first. I held the bag out in front of me and then the SCRABBLE® spell took over. It is like Max's cone of silence at Control in Get Smart. I pick up the tile bag, stick my hand down deep and my world suddenly becomes very small. It is me and this rack and this board and this person sitting across from me and most importantly these seven tiles. There were times when I would have a spare moment in a game to take a breath and would look up and be startled to remember I was sitting in a room with so many other people. The spell is intense. The enchantment irresistible. There is a woman who lives several blocks away from me who goes to the same pool that I go to and one day she saw me sitting by the pool with my flashcards. She was yakking with another neighbor and I was tucked under my baseball hat and sunglasses pretending like I didn't exist, just shuffling through my cards, when M.E. asked "What are you doing there?" Oh. Study words for SCRABBLE®. M.E. looks at me in disbelief. "I LOVE SCRABBLE®, you're kidding me?" She asks if she can look at my cards. I turn them over. They are a group of 8's, which do sort of look daunting and she sadly says "Oh. Oh. You are way out of my league." I assure her I'm not, that I just go through these things hoping on occasion that some big word will look slightly familiar but she's not so sure. One day I intentionally bring my board to the pool, knowing that M.E. is there almost every day. I very casually (I am trying hard not to look too desperate) ask M.E. if she would like to play a game of SCRABBLE®, I just, ahem, happen to have my board here with me. "Oh! I would love that." This started about a month ago. Since then I have printed out lists of twos and threes, and ordered her a Bob's Bible and finally have her on a clock (we played many games with no timer) and she has stopped asking what the words I play mean and often will just turn her rack to me (which makes me cringe a bit) and say, "Now I know you could find something in this" (no M.E. I don't like it, play for the most points you can find). M.E. calls me if I don't show up at the pool now. "I'm here. I'm okay. I have books and things, but it would be so much better if you were here." She says 'you', but what she really means is you and your SCRABBLE® board. I secretly love it. She is getting hooked. I loaned her my copy of Word freak. She tells me that she lies in bed at night unable to sleep so she rambles through the Greek alphabet. More than once she has commented about games we've had days ago. "You know, late last night I thought about that play you made, that 'bingo and out' and that was really nice. I wondered if people do that very often?" I mean this girl has got it bad. And I am soooo glad. M.E. is my secret stash. I innocently look at my husband and tell him, "Take the afternoon off honey, I'll take all the kids over to the pool. Do whatever you want." At first he would look at me in disbelief. "Okay...." Now he knows though. Because he gets home from work at 6pm and nobody is home. We are all over at the pool. The kids are swimming or on the playground and M.E. and I are hunched over our board and Gary walks up and stands there and when I hit my clock says "So....are we having dinner tonight?" Well yeah! Can't you see there are only 20 tiles left in the bag? These are not always the most stellar games because M.E. is just learning how to play the game competitively and does not have the basic word knowledge down yet, but she is so obviously wanting to get there. She also has a very natural ability to find hot spots and a good working vocabulary to begin with. She understands some of the strategy and is not afraid to look stupid and ask questions. Some of the games are very close and she has, of course, beaten me once or twice. The kids are always hovering around, we neutralize the clock to deal with them. There are moments though when the spell takes over, when I am hunched over that board and my clock is slowly ticking and I am trying to find the right play, when the silence comes rushing in, no children splashing and squealing in the pool, no airplanes groaning overhead, no adults chatting and laughing, complete silence, me and these seven letters and the board and my opponent and I will find my play and hit my clock and then suddenly come back to my surroundings with a start- where is the baby, where are the kids, my god, there was about thirty seconds there when I completely forgot where I was. That is what the sound of thirty-five thousand rattling tiles sounds like, the beginning of that silence, the sound the world makes when it steps aside and I'm thrown into the possibilities of seven letters. Back to topPART SIX
One night Jim Nanavati was telling me about an expert player in Canada who quit playing SCRABBLE®. Jim said the guy claimed SCRABBLE® is "a game for losers." And it's true. You can lose a lot of games in these tourneys and still do well. You can also lose a lot and really not do well. I was thrilled to go 18-13 when all was said and done. When I tell everybody back home how I finished up they sort of nod their heads slowly. "Believe it or not winning 18 games out of 31 is pretty decent." Eyebrows get raised. "Really. I was seeded 89th. I finished 23rd." Uh-huh. If you're happy, Steph, we're happy for you. "My rating went UP 122 points---come back!--Wait, listen--" My SCRABBLE® friends get it though. It felt very good to come home and receive emails congratulating me for finishing 23rd. It may be a long way from the money, and I may be mucking about in the swamp land of division five, but I played some nice games and did better than expected. People that play tournaments know what a fight it is to win more than you lose in any division. My first game on Sunday was against Barry, a social worker from Connecticut. We chatted quietly during announcements and when he found out I like to write we started talking novels and short stories. Barry and I bond immediately, something about the sick sense of humor we share I think (whenever Laura would make announcements regarding suspect behavior I would look around and catch Barry's eye and point my finger at him and mouth "YOU--She's talking about YOU.") and midweek you could find the two of us standing in the 'breakfast room' aka the 'sugar and starch room' bonding over antidepressants and dysfunctional families. I love those chats. I always win. I played my first game with Barry and one of my last. I never got him, though I thought I had a better chance during the last one. He did manage to find all the blanks in both our games and he's smart enough to know how to use them. And to be honest, after the four games I played at club last night I am wondering how I won any of my games at the NSC. My friend, Walt Blue, and I get paired for the last game, after I had a humiliating game against Angelina, and it turns out I just didn't know what humiliation was. Walt beat me by *341* points with a score of 595. I think mine was around 254. But who's counting? Thankfully I was spared this type of humiliation at the NSC (two games came close, but the sad truth is, the possibility of such a merciless beating lurks just around the corner every time I sit in front of a board. I would love to never be on the other end of the "I NEVER have games like this!" comment again. I have some studying to do before I can even get close though. My worst game in San Diego was my head delivered on a SCRABBLE® board by Matthew Carter. He beat me by 252 points with a total score of 548. When we finished the game and I shook Matt's hand and congratulated him, the sound of the sigh I released as I leaned forward and pounded my head against the table was almost as loud as the ear-splitting WHOOSH my spread made when it instantly evaporated into thin air. The only time I was ahead was on my opening move, when I played HONED for 26 points. Matt teased me with the modest REF for 11 he put down after and then proceeded to get three bingos in a row. It would have been four bingos in a row if he didn't have to dump that pesky J for 39 points before he could get WINTRIER through that O8 trip lane for 86 points. The three bingos before JAM were the naturals ROTARIES and ELEVATOR, followed by REdBONES. "Hold the play please." I can barely say it loudly enough for Matt to hear, my throat is so choked up. I look over at the score sheet. I have 90 points and if Matt gets this bingo down he will have 231. I tell Matt "I'm going to challenge," and reach for a challenge slip, but what I'm thinking is "REDfuckingBONES?" knowing as I write the word down on the slip and raise my hand feebly into the air and call out as loudly as I can under the circumstances "CHALLENGE!," that the word is certainly good. Now, I'm no brain doctor or psychologist, but I wonder what exactly is going on when one part of my head tells my body to do something, say, like make the decision to challenge a word, while the unreliable editor that lives in the other part of my head (Anne Lamott claims her unreliable editor is always tuned to one station: KFKD) is jumping up and down and waving flags "Don't CHALLENGE!! The word is GOOD. Don't DO IT. I remember seeing it somewhere--stay with me Steph, can't you feel that, that little tinge of memory-" but I'm raising the challenge slip--"Oh JEEZ, she's gonna do it anyway!" and the editor slaps her forehead...."CHALLENGE!". I wonder what is going on when stuff like this happens to me and the only things I can come up with are brain damage from forceps delivery perhaps, or aging gray matter, or altogether too much hash in 1977. REdBONES is quite good. I lose two turns in a row, I can't make out what my second bad challenge is, my hand may have been trembling or maybe rigormortis had begun to set in, but I do lose two turns in a row and now the score is: Steph-90, Matt-356. The rest of the turns Matt gets down QAT, not for the usual 12 points, but for 33 points. He happens to draw the last blank at the end of the game and finds a sweet play for the Z he may have been a little worried about getting stuck with, for 44 points. I get away with the phoney DEUX. (Take that!) The only power tiles I drew was one S and that X. Matt had no difficulties figuring out how to put his good luck to work. Final score, Matt 548, Steph 296. I sit there for a minute and stare down at the board. "Jeez." Matt is energetically filling out his paperwork. "Yeah, I've never had a game this lucky in a tournament before- did you get 252 for the margin?" Laurie Lu and Ed Bowe both have big games against me as well, beating me by 188 and 141 respectively. I drew short on power tiles in those games as well, but I really want to make it clear that these people played lovely games. Luck is certainly a big factor for us division five folks, but you need to know what to do with it when you find it. I used to play over at the Zone and when you lose a game there you have to post the score for public display and the loser is allowed to make a little comment about the game if they feel like it. It always irked me when, instead of saying the equivalent of 'well done,' someone would write something like "MALAISE did it." Meaning, of course, if I hadn't dumb lucked my way into that one bingo my opponent would have won. Obviously when it comes down to one bingo, both players have fought hard and well. I had a couple of high games as well. At one point I was laying my third bingo down on the board against a game I had with Geeke. I shook my head and mumbled "Sorry, this is ridiculous." Geeke wrote the score down and said evenly "Don't apologize. I'd do it to you if I could." Apparently Geeke had a chance to do it to a few other people. She won 19 and a half games and came in 10th place in Division 5. One of my favorite games was in round 20. I just came out of a frustrating loss, and really wanted to avoid ever losing two games in a row if I could. My opponent and I are plugging along, fairly close scores and then after turn 9 I get into trouble. I challenge *HAP* for crying out loud and then have to change 6. My op only plays *one* word out of *16* in the game which is longer than *3* letters. The word was BEND. But she has a nice 60 point lead by move 14 and both blanks are unseen. Being the optimist that I am I know she has them. Then what do you know? I draw GINOUY? and there is an open V at the top of the board. Now THIS never happens. I find OUtVYING for 94 points and then draw the second blank when I replenish my rack. I don't quite have the bingo, but I think if I dump an i and pick up one of the t's left I could...this REALLY never happens. I draw the tile I need, get sTRIATED to the bottom triple (which she challenges) for 77 and take the game. 425 for me, to her 338. Unbelievable. The best live entertainment either side of the Mississippi. The frustrating loss I had just before round 20? Round 19, of course. Evan mentioned in some post how he never gives the full names of his opponents because he would never want to embarrass anybody when they were not asking for it. Meet Sal Campo. My opponent for round 19. We actually met earlier when we were sitting at a table waiting for some games to finish. I asked him where he was from and he said "Bin Laden Land." Ah. Kabul? It was actually Manhattan. He brags about training at the famous Manhattan SCRABBLE® club. When he sits down for our game I say hello and he nods and pulls a plastic baggie full of what looks to be powdered oregano from his pants pocket and pours a third of it into his mouth and swallows. You didn't get lunch? I always tell my opponent "Let's have a good game," and offer my hand across the board before we begin playing. Sal seems genuinely put off, but obliges me anyway. Sal doesn't start off very well. I open with THING for 22 and he exchanges 5. I then play QUIT for 33. He plays LOUIE for 25. We kind of poke along a couple of turns, with me up by 20 or so and then I find BOwLERS for 76. Every move prior to this move Sal has been placing some of his tiles on the board upside down. I have been turning the board and his tiles into the upright position. After the fourth time I tell him "You're putting your tiles on the board upside down. Technically I can call a director over here after the third time and get an extra minute on my clock. Just want you to know." He stares down at the board. After I put my bingo down he exchanges 5 and then puts GRAInIER down on his next turn and the blank (which has a little star in the lower, left corner, is upside down). "68- I have to go to the bathroom, you know the rule about that?" and he hits my clock. "Yea, go ahead." "Put your tiles down on the table." "What?" (my clock is running) "Put your tiles down-" "I'm not putting my tiles down on the table with my clock running." Bryan (our division director walks by at this moment, maybe it is a coincidence, maybe he sees the dark cloud hovering over Sal's and my board from across the room. I neutralize the clock. "He's going to the bathroom and says I have to put my tiles down while my clock is running-" Bryan shakes his head "Just so he doesn't see them when he leaves." "Well not while my clock is running." Sal leaves and I look up at Brian "As long as you're here, this is the fifth time he has placed one of his tiles on the board upside down." I turn the starred blank over the right way. "I know there is a rule that says I get an extra minute on my clock after three times. I warned him after four. I'm not asking for you to do it now, but-" Bryan interrupts me. "Well, for a blank it doesn't matter." "What?" "Well some blanks don't have any symbols on them so it doesn't matter." Gee Bryan, I don't think I would be complaining if this were a BLANK blank. And I didn't read that chapter in the rule book where it stated "BLANKS DON'T COUNT." And I AM using my time to turn the damn tiles over the right way. "But this blank ISN'T blank-" "Well," Bryan has some sort of southern drawl "that's the way I'm rulin' on it." And he walks away. I start my clock again. Sal comes back from the bathroom. "Is it my turn yet?" "No." And I'm definitely riled. Why can't I just ignore the stupid upside down tiles? Why is this guy going to the bathroom in the middle of a game? Why is he taking out the baggie of oregano for the second time and gulping it down? Bryan walks up and whispers something in Sal's ear. I'm assuming it is "Place your tiles on the board the right way, otherwise I'm giving her an extra minute" and not "Let's go get a beer after the last game." After this secret message Sal continues to place tiles upside down, hits his clock and then as I begin to turn the board stops me and fixes his tiles. Well, gee....that's MUCH better. I lose the game by 23 points (with 2 seconds left on my clock). In round 14 Alvina and I had an interesting endgame. I play what I believe is my winning out play. One point, but a win is a win. And I catch her with some points on her rack. She says "I'm going to challenge" My notes say the play is XI, but I wonder about that. I shrug and say fine. Then she looks around for a minute and says "Wait a minute....there is still a tile in the bag." Sorry? "There is one tile left in the bag. It's yours." Nooooooo. It is the last round of day two. I am tired, and more than confused. Bryan comes over and Alvina tells him what happened and much to my surprise Bryan says (obviously he is tired too, ready to go get that beer with Sal) "Well, tell ya what, you have shown her your rack," Alvina's rack has somehow been turned out to me. "and that indicates the end of the game, so let's just give it to Stephanie." "No!" Alvina protests. "No I just now turned my rack for you to see when I was explaining, I never showed her the rack!" I am thinking I have never read any of these rules in the rule book, but I'm liking them. When Bryan turns to me though and asks "Did she show you her rack at the end of the game?" I have to shake my head and say "No, I never saw her rack until you came over here." Bryan shrugs. "Okay then, take your last play off, take the last tile out of the bag and take your turn again." Unfortunately when we do it this way I lose the game by 6 points. I ask for a recount. I gain two points, but Alvina wins fair and square. I shake her hand, "It's yours, well done." "Thank you for being so honest." I sigh. "I have my moments." The next day I run into my club mate, Anne Loring, in the bathroom. She tells me "I played your buddy Sal just now." "Really?" "He did the upside down tile thing and the green powder thing AND went to the bathroom during our game as well." "Get out." "Not only that but when I mentioned the rule about getting an extra minute on my clock if he didn't put his tiles down correctly he said he'd never heard of that rule before." "GET OUT." "Yep." "Well," I throw the paper towel I've been drying my hands on in the garbage can. "I guess that's the way they train them in Manhattan." And some woman on her way to a stall laughs out loud. Back to topPART SEVEN
"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Pretty sure that's Tolstoy. I get into a discussion about families with Jim Fonti on Sunday night. He comes up to me during the last game and during my op's turn I ask him how he did and he shrugs and says "Lost 'em all," in his thick New York accent. "Hang on for a minute, I'll buy you a beer." Jim and I have been chatting online for a while and we sort of know the basics about each other, spouses, kids, jobs, ages. Somehow the conversation turns to families and we end up buying another beer and then dinner and we're still yakking about it as we wander up to the after hours game room to have a game. I am telling Jim how I think forgiveness is pretty much overrated. "I'm sort of like that Michelle Pfifer character in 10,000 Acres. There is that scene where her sister is visiting her on her deathbed in the hospital and the sister hints that maybe Pfifer's character should forgive their father before she dies. The woman is dying of breast cancer. She's pale and weak and thin and she looks her sister squarely in the eye and tells her that she doesn't feel like she has accomplished much with her life, how she was hoping to do more, but she will be able to go peacefully knowing 'I never forgave that bastard.' I laugh and say "I love that scene." Jim gives me a concerned look. He shakes his head. "Come on. What if you walk into your parent's house today and go up to your mom and give her a big hug. What do you think she would do?" I stare down at my feet. "Well....I guess hug me back." Jim shrugs. "See." I hold the door open for him at the game room. "And then run for her parka because hell would have just frozen over." The game room is not too crowded. For some odd reason the Concourse has filled it with enormous round tables. Just the thing you want for an after hours SCRABBLE® room. People are sitting on the edge of the circle as much as possible. Jim and I ask if we can borrow someone's travel set and sit off in a corner and start a game. Joel Sherman comes in and starts setting up for Anagrams next to us. Marlon wanders in. He walks by Jim and I and looks down at the tiny board and tiles. "You mus' REALLY want to play tha' game BAD." Another night Jim and I are playing in the game room and this woman, Sarah, calls Steve Polatnick over to help me with my rack--AEHNSST. "Help her Steve, she knows something is there but she can't find it." I am looking at the open board for 8's, it feels very 8ish to me. Steve pulls up a chair and in his soft-spoken New York accent asks "Okay, so you don't see anything here, 7's or 8's?" I laugh, "I can feel them in the air." "For instance, this doesn't come to mind..." and he shuffles my rack into HASTENS. Ah, well, sure. And then he points to some of the possible 8's on the board. He is not being snotty at all and seems to really want to help. "This comes to mind, for instance..." and he shuffles the tiles and points to a tile on the board to play through. He sounds just like Christopher Walken in one of his less crazy roles. "Oh!" I find SNATCHES and start putting the tiles on the board. Steve quietly says "I like that one even better." I announce my score to Jim. "Hey, don't mind me over here...I'll find all my 8's without help, I'm sure!" He laughs. I've been told Steve 'likes the women'. More than three people used those exact words. I never get any letchy vibes from him though. A couple of nights we end up playing poker. Roger Cullman was playing, I was watching. Steve, Esla, Roger, Josh Silber and another guy I don't know. Josh has zero patience for Roger, who doesn't play poker, so is taking too long to make his move. "Come on! This is taking forever!" Not only that but Roger has won two games in a row. Polatnik holds his hand up to Josh and in his Christopher Walken way says "Hold on Josh, he'll get it." Roger wins another pot and Josh and the other guy say they've had enough and cash out. The next day Josh took to walking behind me during my games to see what I was doing. He is one of the word judges. I never got around to asking him why he wasn't playing. We used to chat a bit over at Playsite, but neither one of us has played over there for a long time. After one game he comes up and says "I saw when you played off that B with the blank on your rack you had HERBALS. "Did I?" Next game he comes up behind me too. Normally I don't care if people look over my shoulder when I play, but now this is bothering me. Later on that night in the game room Jim Nanavati and I are playing a rec game, some woman is sitting talking to Jim, and I am struggling with a rack (this was after a couple of scotches and late at night) and I trade a few tiles. Josh is behind me again and says "Before you traded you had-" and I snap a little too quickly "Josh, I don't care what I had, I traded my tiles, I'm moving on with my life now, okay?" The woman laughs nervously. Josh puts his hands up in the air defensively. "Fair enough." and walks away. I feel like a shit. But I don't like it when people tell me what they see on my rack when they are strolling around, free of any of the real pressures of being in a game. It reminds me of the time I decided to start working out to lose some weight and my out of shape, pack-a-day smoking mother-in-law came in and looked down at me and then looked up at the video on t.v. and in her thick Jersey accent said "That ain't right, your feet gotta be higher off the ground." When Evan Berofsky looks over my shoulder during games it's okay though. For one thing Evan never directly tells you what you missed. Well, Evan never directly tells you anything. He sort of communicates with these sidelong glances and quickly, quietly uttered one-liners. When I ask him if he wants to play when Jim and I finish, he snaps his fingers and taps his fists on top of one another "Don't play after hour games." Jim makes a pointy play and says "I couldn't leave that juicy spot for you." I've got the X though and he's opened another hot spot and Evan looks over at the board and says "That's okay, she's got something even better now." I don't see it as quickly as Master Berofsky of course, but I eventually get the 45 point play down and Evan nods his head and says "There ya go," and leaves to go find his notes. He meets us in the game room the next night with his notes and comes and sits down at the table as if we'd all agreed to spend this next half hour together this way. Jim and I goofing off over the tiny travel set and Evan every now and then looking up from his work "Look at that, look what she found...good girl." Now if anybody else came up to me during any kind of game and said 'good girl' to me after I made a decent play I would have some issues to settle with them. When Evan does it though, it is so completely void of any condescension or self righteousness I do actually feel like a good girl. For about a minute. On Wednesday morning I finish game 23 and see Evan nervously pacing around the water cooler. He catches my eye and I walk over to see what's up. "I think Randy's in trouble." Evan's next game is with Randy Greenspan and I follow Evan's gaze to the back of the tournament room where Randy is aimlessly wandering over to the computer tables. "We're suppose to be playing right now." Evan says he thinks he's on heart medication. "Did you tell your director?" Evan is nervously bouncing from side to side. He nods his head. I have to leave to go start my game and when I look up a minute later two women are escorting Randy up to the front of the tournament room, one on each elbow. Randy looks a little dazed. He's moving very slowly and clutching a plastic cup of water. That night I hear he was eventually taken away in an ambulance, but insisted on coming back to finish his games. His record shows that he finished games 26, 27, and 28 and then didn't play at all on Thursday. Nobody I speak with on Thursday knows if he and Ember went home or how Randy was doing. During the awards ceremony a Division 6 winner went up to shake John Williams' hand and have her picture taken. I am sitting in the very back of the room and can't see very well, but I notice after the picture is taken she is being led over to some chairs on the side by John Williams and Laura Klein. She can barely walk and as they get her to the side she completely collapses. I turn to Bob Gillis "Jeez, somebody else is sick, I think that woman just fainted." A few minutes later they announce another Division 6 winner and the same woman stands up and throws her arms over her head and gives a loud "WHOO-HOO!!" and then collapses back down again. "Oh my. She didn't faint. She fell. She's drunk." It then seems to me as if John and Laura are like the mom and dad of this enormous family. Some of their children are brilliant and never act up, some of them have a hard time following directions, some of them don't play well with others, some are rebels, mentors and loners, and they've brought their enormous, nutty family to this formal, public party put on by their very rich and domineering grandfather, Hasbro. At the town meeting on Monday night someone asks John Williams what he would think if instead of keeping the faulty 'deluxe' game boards after the last game, they left them on the tables in protest. (Apparently in an effort to fix a glare problem the boards had two years ago, Hasbro covered the turn tables with a matte grid, which in fact, had absolutely no glare whatsoever. Unfortunately the grid was not deep enough and the tiles slid all over the board. Many times I would be scanning the board looking for a play and see NR on top of each other and think "Whoa, I can't believe she let me get away with THAT," and realize the tiles had all shifted down a row. The turn tables were also incredibly squeaky. That first day I felt as if I were surrounded by 350 gerbils going round and round in their exercise wheel. Somebody, or lots of some bodies had to come in and spray Armorall on every turn table to desqueak them...pretty sure DESQUEAK is NOT good. Though Eddie Malekebu played DEBEAK on me one night at club and enjoyed a free turn.) John shook his head. "I think that would be a very bad idea. There would be no National SCRABBLE® Championship without Hasbro. They pay for all of this and to do something like that would look very bad." (Have good manners, kids!) At the same meeting Stu Goldman asks when they will have separate rooms for the players in future National tournaments. He doesn't say it, but I'm assuming he wants to separate the pros from the dabblers. He complains that the room is just too crowded and noisy. John tells him "Never. Whenever we have a National event like this I want people to walk in the room and see all of us together, no matter how big we get." (Stu gets his own room???) Good Answer. For the record, I have been at tournaments with 70 players and have encountered more congestion and noise than I did at the NSC. I was very impressed with how quiet and roomy the place was considering there were more than 700 of us in there. The next morning Laura announces that if there are any players who do not wish to keep the deluxe board after the last game they could leave it to donate it to the School SCRABBLE® Program. (Mom and Dad are always thinking!) One morning during announcements Laura asked "If you have any concern or problem regarding the way the tournament is being run, could you please direct your concern to a director or the coordinator during tournament hours and NOT call us at our hotels." (Mom and Dad never get any time alone!) There was also "It has been brought to our attention that some players have brought protiles which have stickers on the back of them that could distinguish certain tiles from others. These tiles will not be allowed in tournament play." (Mom and Dad just want the kids to play nice.) My favorite though was "Good morning players, it has been brought to our attention that players should check the positioning of their name tags as some opponents may be able to read your rack from the reflection on the plastic." On the last day Laura was explaining how the top 40 pairings would proceed for the last three games. "Repairing will happen after every game, so you have to get your cards turned in. Yes, I know REPAIRING is not an acceptable SCRABBLE® word!" and the entire room breaks into laughter. Laura throws her head into her hand and shakes it back and forth. She leans into the microphone "Hey, I just WORK here, okay?" Man, if I had a dime for every time I said that to my kids. It was wonderful not being a mom for an entire week. It felt decadent playing SCRABBLE® whenever I wanted to. One morning I woke up very early and after putzing around in my room for an hour I broke down and called Walt. "You wanna play one?" He laughs,"Oh Stephanie,I think it's hysterical you called me!" "Well you are the only person I knew would be awake. Plus you have that coffee maker in your room. Tell me to go back to bed if you aren't up for it." There is a small pause on the other end of the phone, "Give me five minutes." It was also wonderful to have so many new people to socialize with. Anywhere I walked there were people to talk to. I came back from getting lunch over at the mall one day and still had some time to kill and walked over to the fountain in the quad of the Concourse and sat next to Travis Chaney. I met him briefly at the reception, but he was nice enough and seemed to be an interesting fellow. Travis has his short hair dyed in a blonde and black herringbone and likes to wear bright red or green Scottish plaid pants or jackets and funky shoes and other custom clothing items. One day he had a pink t-shirt on with hundreds of those plastic eyes (little flat, plastic bubbles with small, black discs floating in them) glued all over the front and back. I sit next to Travis and ask how his tournament is going. It is a beautiful day. The sun is working its magic and there is a slight misty breeze from the fountain and I keep taking deep gulps of the fresh air. Travis and I talk for about a half hour. We talk about SCRABBLE®, and Sowpods (my apologies to my employer), and jazz and families. In that order I believe. He tells me a heart breaking story about his family. Tears well up and I concentrate hard on speaking in a steady voice. "Nobody should have to go through that." He is not feeling sorry for himself or needy. We have just been talking. I take a deep breath. A bird flies by. A motorcycle revs in the distance. The sun is the perfect amount of warm, the breeze and mist from the fountain spray across my shoulders. "Well," Travis stands up, "I guess we better go get our cards." I grab my purse. "Yeah. I suppose it's time." And we walk into the crowded Concourse lobby.Back to top