A Scrabble Loser with a Werewolf Heart

Things I know vs. Things I don't know...the latter wins.

I know everyone thinks I should be better at Scrabble than I really am, but it wouldn't be fitting into character if I was. The game is all about strategy, not about having an extensive vocabulary and knowing how to spell. It's not about being a stickler to the rules. It's not about being Grammar Nazi. If it was about all of those things, I'd be crowned some kind of champion; people would hail me as some kind of Scrabble knight. I'd be some mythical slayer of word dragons through the realm of the Scrabble Kingdom. Scrabble's not about those things. It's a game. It's not a spelling bee, a competition. It's, simply, a game.

I'm not very good at games.

Things I know: Words.

Things I don't know: How to win at games.

Things I know: Spelling.

Things I don't know: Strategy.

I could be studied as the greatest failure of strategy of all time. All Time, like, in terms of Ever.

Gangsta Boss Man's told me, on various occasions, that I've "no game." He means it in a lot of ways, but mostly in terms of flirting and dating. Those kinds of things. He's also noted how I have no professional savvy, the kind of savvy that one needs to navigate through the politics of corporate middle-management. What he means to say is that I've got no game in that either. My mom may say the same thing. In fact, she has. It's kind of depressing, really. Not just that I've no game but that people know it. People have known it to the point of sharing said observation with me. Like, they want me to know. They're informing me for the sake of making me aware so that I can make changes. So that I can change. Thing is, I don't think it's that bad. Don't tell anyone because I don't like to admit it, but I don't care that I don't know how to play games to win them. I like being handy with a pool cue. I like smashing the competition on Jeopardy!, but I don't care for strategy. The way I see it: It is what is it. I know it or I don't. I'm the winner or I'm not, based on what I bring to the table, not on how I bluff with my poker face. Fuck it. I'm no Lady Gaga. I don't even know what that song's about. I've maybe heard it once in its entirety. But I know enough to know that I don't have one—a poker face—and that I don't want one. In many ways, I want nothing to do with Lady Gaga.

Damn, I just remembered that I had a dream about Lady Gaga last night. Maybe I'll never know why. God knows that I couldn't care less.

It could be argued that a game face is the most important face that I lack. It's the single most useful device that I could engineer, but that I won't. It won't be due to a failure in doing so, rather a failure to do so. And it won't be a failure, not if I don't try. So, maybe, Scrabble can just be enjoyed in the playing of it and not necessarily due to the wanting to win of it. And I guess that's what it boils down to, so many of my failures: The lack of ambition to develop a strategy, to play some game.

It has been a week, maybe.

It has been just shy of a week, maybe, since I gave up on the last game that I had chosen not to play, simply because it had grown dull. It had crossed the line between Things That Are Worth It Because They Could Be Fun and Things That Are Not Fun, At All. When the actual player starts treating you like a chore or, in his words, "like an assignment," then there's absolutely no reason to keep at the game, since I'm not playing ayway. Without strategy, even the only one that's playing gets bored. He'll just keep winning, keep setting his own rules, keep laying traps, and I'll just keep stepping into them and keep on with the losing of the whole thing. That's when it gets boring. When it gets boring for the only one that's actively having fun, then it becomes boring for the one that's just been pursuing the prospect of getting to the fun—when all the playing-to-win becomes just playing-for-the-joy-of-it—as opposed to having fun in the game of it all.

It's how I get to be the Big Winner. Jim Henson won the first Travelin' Scrabblin' game. It was the first time he'd ever played. I was so proud. Prouder than if I'd won myself. Watching him lay down the tiles to spell NATIVITY was a pretty special moment. He didn't know it until I mentioned it but, laying out all his 7 letters, that won him a 50-point Bingo! over the score of the actually letter tiles and board squares they'd landed on. Leaving News that night, he was glowing with self-satisfaction, totally well-earned self-satisfaction. I know beating me had something to do with it. I know winning the first time he'd ever played it had the most to do with it. The best part, I think, was winning without strategy. Winning out of sheer playing of the game. Winning from laying down tiles that formed words. Winning, even if he had to ask me once or twice if the word he wanted to put down was spelled correctly or, even, if it would count at all. Teaching him, toward the end of the game, how to put down single tiles at the corners of where two words cross in order to gain points for both new words, it made me feel great. Leaving News that night, I grabbed his hand to raise it over our heads as we walked and proclaimed, "Who's the Big Winner? Who's the Big Winner? Jim Henson's the Big Winner! Yayayayay!" Slightly embarrassed, it made him smile, chuckle, and blush a bit.

That's probably a better feeling than it would have been to win the game.

It's been a week, maybe just shy of a full seven days, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't change a thing. I'm still not itching to win. I'm glad enough with walking away a good sport. Me and my werewolf heart.