Friday, June 27, 2008

I lost at Scrabble

Ordinarily, I wouldn't mention losing at a game, mostly because I'm fiercely competitive and HATE to lose. And I'm not very gracious when I win either.

But Wednesday, I lost at Scrabble to two almost second-graders.

Ella had spotted our old Scrabble game in the top of my closet and had been begging me to get it down and teach her to play. Wednesday morning I got out the game and taught her and her friend M, who was here for a playdate, how to play.

In defense of my loss, I tried to only play words that they'd know. I decided not to spell squamous or hypotenuse. And since their spelling skills aren't quite up with their reading levels, I had to help the girls with their words. I helped M use her q and Ella use her j.

But it turns out I did too good a job at helping them, because they both beat me. Ella, who is taking after me in her competitiveness, decided it wasn't so bad to have M win the game because I lost. She gloated to B later that day about how she had beaten me.

I think it's time for a rematch, and this time, I'm not going to show any mercy!

2 comments:

ckh said...

When I help with words, I usually don't keep score. I don't let my daughter cheat, though, and use things like "bady" (sounds like baddie) because it isn't a real word, I don't care how much you like it. Then we stop playing.

I hope you like the way I architected this comment. I spent so much time hoping that it would have the right impactfulness.

Anonymous said...

I don't get it CK?

Gardner - don't worry its not the first time I've read about a parents competitiveness surfacing in a game of scrabble with their children.