Let me in

Despite our best efforts, our evenings have taken on a predictable pattern. If Ottawacker Jr. has no soccer, we eat and attempt to play some sort of game. We have run the gamut of games and seem to have settled on Scrabble as the least contentious. 

The problem is me. I have always hated games with a passion, and have had to make a supreme effort to get involved in this nightly ritual. Some of the games Mrs. Ottawacker has grown up with - and which Ottawacker Jr. seems to like - drive me up the wall. Monopoly, for example. Masterpiece. Stockticker. FFS. It is like having a fingernail slowly pulled off with a pair of rusty pliers. There are some I can cope with - Sorry, Trouble - and I am usually OK for a game of chess or draughts or Uno or Yahtzee. Or maybe two at a push.

Scrabble is somewhere in the middle. It's like lasagne for me. I know I should like it and I know I will like it once I am actually playing. But the idea of having it as an evening's entertainment never seems to appeal to me. So just as she does with her lasagne, my wife has now taken to putting the Scrabble board in front of me without telling me in advance. It seems to work.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Ottawacker, there is now another fly in the ointment: the midget. Now that he has once more learned to like the fact that he has to shower, he has decided he doesn't particularly want to play Scrabble. I think he might be taking his cues from me - so we sweetened the pot a little, promising him he could watch an episode of One Foot in the Grave before going to bed IF he plays Scrabble. So far, so good. Even if I am beginning to hear "I don't believe it" a little too often.