The family that I married into are BIG into board games and the like, while my own birth family is more into physical competition. At large family gatherings, Pictionary, Scrabble, Monopoly, Cribbage, Poker, and Charades are sure to be in play. I’ve never been very good at this sort of fun and games. Instead, I would hide behind the lens of my camera and document the family fun.

My mother-in-law, bless her heart, told me after I played DOG in a family game of Scrabble, “Julie, you need to at least try.” I insisted that my view of trying was to get my turn over with as painlessly as possible.

Fast forward to Christmas Day 2020. Our family fun & games was limited to a much smaller number thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. My game playing skills haven’t improved much since that day in the year of nineteen-something. But, I guess I do a better job and trying to put my best effort on board keeping the expectation of actually winning far from my mind.

So what do you think happened in this year of surprises?

You guessed it; I got lucky. YaYa’s perfect play turned out not to be so perfect. He was missing a letter and had to play elsewhere on the board. I looked down at the area he’d been eyeing. Not one but two Triple Word Score spots were at my disposal. I just had to figure out how I could get one of them. I shuffled the tiles around a bit trying to come up with a word. Cafe was too short to reach. I kept shuffling and thinking. Then it came to me. I made my move and we were forced to pull out the rule book to settle on the scoring. BoBo questioned whether I would enjoy the tripping twice over. As it turns out, it was far better than that. I also got to enjoy 50+ points for using all of my tiles in one play.
AND….

I WON!!

I think my mother-in-law would be very proud of me. Don’t you think so too?