Chapter Seven: Game Night Gladiator

My Mama always wins. It doesn't matter what game it is, she will always win. Okay so I might have exaggerated just a little because I remember like three times that I won. And you'd better believe that those three times I was hyped as a toddler experiencing their first sugar high.

As a little Lissa some of the games I remember playing are Zingo, Its like Bingo but its with pictures and, well look it up if you want to. We also played Clue, but not the normal Clue, because my family was cool, so we had Simpsons Clue. I liked to be Lady Scarlet (Lisa) because Mama said that on the show her name was Lisa, and that's like Lissa but with an ee sound instead of an i sound. (Yeah my name is Lissa, like List but no t and there's an a at the end (I guess my parents wanted to be original?)) So I liked to play as Lisa, or Mrs Peacock, who was Marge on the show, but if my sister didn't snatch up the piece I would get it. We also played this game, "Ticket to Ride". It was about creating railroads that ran across the country or something.

We also had this game called Quark-Quork-Quarkle? I can't spell it but its a damn good game, my family was fricking obsessed with it when we first started playing. Like forget being addicted to gambling, we were addicted to Quar-Quark- forget it I'm just gonna just say Q from now on because I really have no idea how to spell the name. This game, as well as the name of the actual disorder, is not dyslexia-friendly. Seriously it took me like five tries to spell dyslexia without auto correct. It's kinda like Dominos, if Dominos were only one design per tile ad matched by sets of six instead of three, actually the best way I can describe it is if Uno and Dominos had a baby and the baby was in the form of a tile game. But you could have probably guessed that based on the name, I mean what else could Qua-Qor-Quoar- you know what I mean.

But the best part of game night was the popcorn. On game night we made popcorn, and me and my sister got to drink coke in fancy fluted glasses and stay up til nine, which as a nine year old was really exciting. We played on the dinning room table, which was kind of annoying, since its a rectangle which means that not everyone can reach the board so easily. So sometimes, if we weren't playing a card game, we would move the chairs so that it was two people on opposite sides. But it felt more like teams that way so most of the time we just had one person sit on each side like we do at dinner.

As I have already said, my mama wins everything, but my Dad says that one time they were playing scrabble and Mama got a little drunk and she lost. I personal don't believe that Mama could be beat at scrabble even when drunk though so the truth of this story is up for debate.

And Scrabble, I love Scrabble! You might be surprised at this, for I am of course dyslexic, but I do indeed enjoy a game of Scrabble. I actually have a very good vocabulary, my problem just comes in spelling. So when my friend asked me to join her Scrabble club I was of course like,

"You do know I can't spell the word remember, right?" to which my dear friend Melody (who in addition to her Scrabble talents is an excellent musician) said

"Yeah but you'll be on my team so I can figure out the spelling." So I said okay and I went to the club meeting at a local diner.

The club was run by Melody's uncle and they had spread out a bunch of boards across a bunch of tables. I entered the diner and to my complete horror saw that the club was made up mostly of Olive Stuart's friends, though she herself wasn't there. It turns out that Addison, one of the girls that used to participate in Olive's mean schemes, was Melody's uncle's daughter, so Melody's cousin. But I wasn't about to make a big deal outta that. No no no, I, being the big mature seventh grader that I was, acted like there was nothing odd about it. Like I had never seen them before. And they in turn did me the same curtsy. I think. And maybe it was just me, but those girls did a lot of whispering. And was it just me or did they seem to laugh whenever I put a word down?

Still I managed to have a fun time. It turns out that despite being sh*t at spelling, I'm not horrible at coming up with idea when given a bunch of letters. Admittedly Melody had to remind me that the word I suggested had a few more letters than what we had on our rack but other than that it was great. I even got I nice warm chocolate chip cookie, which big grown up girls are definitely allowed to do.

Me and Melody went to Scrabble competitions, okay the entire club went so it wasn't super special, but still it felt really cool. We even went to the national Scrabble tournament, which is in fact a thing. We made our own team t-shirts and everything! It was at a Hasbro convention or something and I remember we got these goody bags for participating and it included a Rubik Cube. We watched the Rubik cube champions later that day and I was just in awe because not only can they solve it, BUT HOW DO THEY MOVE SO FAST! Me and my friend also got these little toys too and they were so dang cute!

Where was I? Oh yes, I had just finished talking about Scrabble. Sorry my brain went a little off topic, I can get distracted easily by things that are irrelevant. But that is a story for another time.

That's all for now!

Love Ya,

Lissa