Scrabble

I think I've always enjoyed playing the game Scrabble. I'm a fairly competitive person, and that particular game seems fun to me because it actually requires a reasonable amount of skill to win at. However, that doesn't mean I'm too great at it.

A few months ago, our apartment began playing Scrabble more often. I had suggested it earlier since I thought that I might have been able to beat a few people at it. That wasn't the case. Since I've started playing it more often, I have not legitimately won a single game. The first game I played was against my roommate, Scott, where we didn't play by the rules very well and both ended up with ridiculously high scores because of reusing the bonus spaces. For the second game, I played against a different roommate named Mark, an English major and published author who beat me fairly convincingly.

After a couple of practice games down, I thought I was ready and good enough to impress somebody. So, I invited over a girl, who I liked, to play Scrabble on what may have been considered a date. She beat me by a large margin both times we played, although it didn't matter too much for me because I was mainly trying to provide a good time.

There wasn't another opportunity to play before my roommate who was leaving packed the game away. A few weeks later, though, I borrowed it from a friend to play with that same girl. This time, I tried harder to actually win a game and redeem myself. It didn't happen. We played two games and I badly lost both again. I had then lost four times in a row just to her. I wasn't really too angry, though I would have liked to have at least beat her once.

That started a string of games when I didn't lose, but also couldn't seem to win one. I left during the middle of one game against a girl who stopped trying to win. That was still using the game I borrowed. I got Scrabble as a birthday present in June. Since then, I've played three games that were never finished. One I was losing at, anyway, the next I may have been able to win but had the game board messed up near the end when my friend declared himself the winner, and the most recent was this past Friday when the game was close before we had to move it for dinner and it ended up getting messed up again.

So, I've played Scrabble all these times since moving to Utah, and couldn't even win one game. I think I should be able to cut a break one of these days and take one. Hopefully, I can do that soon, since it's kind of a problem that I love Scrabble but hate losing. `