Friday, February 06, 2009

Scrabble-tastic! or "How Scrabble, far from ruining our relationship, has improved it!"

You know you've been playing online Scrabble too much when you find yourself in traffic rearranging the letters of the license plate in front of you, trying to make a word out of them.

As iron sharpeneth iron, so playing against better Scrabble players ( Brad and Julie - a friend from high-school- hurray for Facebook!) is slowly improving my game. But two games at once is about the max for my brain. I get into a game and think, "Where is that letter "G"? Oh, it was in the other game I'm playing...Rats!"

The old stereotype of a husband coming home and sitting down behind his newspaper has been replaced with a new stereotype in these modern days: the husband sits behind his laptop. But the thing is, in the old days, wives usually couldn't get INTO the newspaper to speak to their husband. ( But that would be pretty funny... Now I'm envisioning this scenario where a husband finds an article written by his wife telling him all about her day...) Poor things - the wives of yesteryear were reduced to standing behind the newspaper wall and shouting. ( Now I'm envisioning another scenario where the wife is taking a Reaganesque stance and demanding of her husband that he "...tear down this newspaper." ) ( I think my creative juices have been spiked or something. Yes, this is weird.)

ANYWAY... my point is... the wives of today CAN get on the computer and harass their husbands. It's called "online chatting." BLOOP! Up pops a window and there is the wife, invading the cyber-sanctum. Of course, husbands are still free to ignore them. But whatever.

DISCLAIMER: Brad does not ignore me and rarely tunes me out. ( At least, that's what I think. Who knows...? If he does, it's done very intelligently.) But whatever tuning out happens, it can go both ways. Sometimes the un-computered spouse will mumble something passive-agressive about wishing that he/she was the computer so that the spouse would pay attention to him/her. And it's a little joke that both of us understand and at which neither takes offense. We take it as a little wake-up call, jolting us from our cyber-trance, informing us that the other wants to spend time with us. Computers make the heart grow fonder. At least, sometimes. With us.

ALL THIS TO SAY...the other day, I found great joy when I discovered that I COULD be the computer. When we started playing online Scrabble, sometimes he would be upstairs on his laptop, I'd be downstairs on mine, and we'd be chatting away like lovers separated by many miles...It was SO much fun! The best of both worlds! On the computer, and yet with each other too!

Now all we need is a laptop for Aiden and life will be complete.

I am kidding.

Thanks, Gretchen, for encouraging me to get back to my therapy!

8 comments:

ljm said...

I should start playing against you to give you extra therapy...I'm pretty sure you would beat me in my demented state (or in any state)!

Anonymous said...

Delighted to oblige : )

KJ said...

Loved your creative juices! :)

Also, I find it amusing how people chat online with others in the same room (or house). It started in Israel, and I've done it at the Sandford's house, and just the other day I was a college friend's apartment and two of the girls were chatting back and forth on facebook and bursting into giggles while the rest of us sat there in silence :) It was funny - hurray for technology!

drewey fern said...

Hee hee - you made me laugh with your contemplations on the old newspaper reading days. So great!

Anonymous said...

Despite my adoration for the English language and its oddities, I have never played Scrabble. I come from more of a card playing background (mostly Hand and Foot, which uses something like 7 decks at a time, just for fun). You make me want to go get Scrabble and find someone to play with! :)

Anonymous said...

And I know what you mean about chatting from one end of the house to the other. We've gone as far as IMing while both in the office. We know it's time to switch back to vocal communication when we start just sending emoticons. Especially when we send random ones, at the same time, that happen to be the same ones. For example, the other day, we both opted to randomly select the heart, which was totally out of context in the quasi-conversation. But we did it at exactly the same time. Russell almost threw up from the loviness of it.

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