You learn a lot about your friends when you open up a game of Scrabble with them. You learn what kind of winners they are and what kind of losers they are. Just, say, for instance that when a certain someone wins ALL FOUR Scrabble games, that she actually does do a dance and draws a star above her initials on the scorecard -- as if you couldn't just surmise on your own from the column totals that she won. You also learn that while they can play foreign words and Latin prefixes and whatnot, you on the other hand will not be allowed to use proper names at a time when the only letters you can play are an E and a D. Your Q, J and V won't be getting you very far but these people show no mercy. And, sadly for a certain someone but hillariously for the rest of us, you learn that the certain someone likely was not paying attention in grade school when her class was taught how to construct words with the letters of the alphabet. To illustrate, I offer up three examples. Her first was HERL. Well, no, it would have to be a U or you can drop the L but we would not accept HERL. Later she opted for GLOBH which raised eyebrows and resulted in one friend hurling her recently sipped beer out into the air and all over the table. And, lastly, she coughed up POTT. Generous with her Ts, isn't she? But we love her and we don't expect her to be skilled at everything because she does possess many other valuable skills, such as building the fires that we've enjoyed every minute we've been here. And she sings too, though she gets the words mixed up. Because, actually, the lyrics are it never rains in California. She's kept us laughing today. Hard. Seriously, it's enough to put you in the Loony Boon.
