The Reprecussions of Playing Scrabble against an only child

The Man Who Lives In My house used to refuse to play scrabble with me.  Because I always won.  As a sibling-less child, he played board games with his granddad while his grandma hissed in the background, "You let him win, Clair, YOU LET HIM WIN!"

I learnt at my mother's knee.  She never let me win.  It was educational.  I did get pretty good.  My mother and my sister (The Nice One?  She is also The Smart One.  If you combine those two things, doesn't that create The Annoying One?  HMM.) can beat me, but not too many other people can in the three dimensional world.

The only way to beat Bad Grandma and Abbey is if I cheat and sneak extra tiles, which I have been known to do. (You can't cheat on the iphone.  Frustrating.)  Recently, The Man has discovered the scrabble app on his iphone.  He has been practicing. 

He can beat me quite easily now, although he uses all those stupid words that are not really words, like "qi," and "ki".  Technically, this is not cheating, but I don't consider those to be viable words.  Using them is inelegant and smacks of desperation.  On my planet, you can only use words that are actually  part of your vast and evocative vocabulary.  Don't you concur?

But I digress:  he spent a night with my parents a couple of weeks ago.  I got a gleeful text:  "I  BEAT YOUR MOM AT SCRABBLE!"

My mother refused to comment. She just made a hmmmph noise.  This evening I arrived at her house with the Hooligans in tow. We are spending the night and meeting up with The Man tomorrow.  After dishing up icecream for the Hooligans and walking the dog, my mother whipped out her iphone.

"I got this great app for playing scrabble," she mentioned casually. "Look, I have 5 games going with complete strangers.  I'm not winning all of them, but I'm doing pretty well."

Just then my phone rang.  It was my sister.  "You know how The Man beat mom at scrabble two weeks ago?"  I asked her, (She did.  He made sure to tell everyone.)  "Now Mom's playing iphone scrabble with complete strangers.  She's not going to let that happen again.  Uh oh, Abbey, she's continuing to play with one hand and she's flipping me off with the other. 

It would behoove The Man not to become complacent, is all I'm saying.