Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Mama don't play that

I woke up feeling kind of disoriented this morning. I had crazy, unpleasant dreams all night, or at least during the thirty minutes between my alarm going off at 5:30, and my actual dragging ass out of bed at 6:00. Ish. I'm not sure what's causing my bad dreams, and I don't want to point any fingers, but I'm pretty sure it's because Big Daddy and SAM are forcing me to play email Scrabble.

I may have told you before that I do not like games. When I mentioned this to SAM yesterday after she had put up the "word" BRAWLIER, using all her tiles and covering a red triple-word square for a total of 101 points for that one word, she pointed out that I just don't like games where people sit quietly and plot each other's destruction. Good point. I do love me some Taboo.

I can remember when BD and I were in high school and he taught me how to play chess. I wanted to love chess because it's a smart people's game, and I like to think I'm smart. Alas, I did not love it. Later, in our college days, we went through a period of playing a lot of Pente. That was all right, and I must have enjoyed it at least moderately because we played it all the time for a while there, but in the end I got tired of it.

I'm not sure why I hate games of strategy. It's not because I can't sit still or be quiet or pay attention for a long time. I can do all of those things (and sometimes wonder if I'm not the last American who doesn't claim a short attention span). I think it has more to do with competitiveness, or more specifically, my lack thereof. It's hard to spend all that mental energy on something I don't care about at all, because it's just a game and if I win, so what? I can vaguely remember, back in the days of learning chess, feeling like I wanted to win, but I found the feeling to be unpleasant and so must have banished it from my emotional repertoire. Maybe it's just me, but I'll take a good conversation over a silent contest of strategy any day.

10 comments:

Rita said...

I'm the same way. But, my family loves board games, furthermore the kind of board games where people can screw other people and get their points. Mike invested in this game called Carcassonne recently (look it up, it's very high brow and cutting edge), and I thought I'd like it. But, it didn't take my family long to figure out how to just pull the rug out of someone playing innocently and make them lose. I just can't invest my energy or emotion into something that turns my kids into Lord of the Flies savages under the guise of family togetherness.

But, yeah, I like Taboo. I always win.

Mrs. Katherine said...

sassy, i think you and i should be playing scrabble together. i like it, but i can't sit there long enough to think of words that have more than 4 letters in them.

Unknown said...

Hm, I do seem to recall whipping your ass repeatedly in Pente some time back.

Sassy Molassy said...

I did manage to put "eh" as my final word in the "brawlier" game, making a coveted double-word square unusable while expressing my feelings about being beaten by more than 100 points.

Stacey Greenberg said...

why am i being excluded from email scrabble? i LOVE scrabble. either a. you people are scared of me or b. you must not really like me afterall, gin or no gin. damn.

Sassy Molassy said...

I think it's that you aren't continuously available to take your turn. Steph and RJA dreamed this mess up, one of them, and Steph will get all in your grill if you don't go, go, GO! when it's your turn. But she's out of town, so she got left out of my post.

Unknown said...

I didn't include you because you can't even get to Gmail through your firewall at work. I knew there was no way in hell they'd let you into Scrabulous.

Memphisotan said...

Thank you for this post so I don't have to brag on my 101-point word to Steph when she gets back.

Stacey Greenberg said...

excuses, excuses!

Melissa said...

chess is sexy...all that sweaty mental prowess on display. And then you get married and realize its just math. And then I suggest we play scrabble and still manage to get my ass handed to me everytime. I'm with you - let's sic all the competitive spouses on one another. Of course this has nothing to do with being a bitter English major who loses to her theater major hubby...