Prison is Scrabulous
When I was a child, I liked bread and butter. I liked it so much that when I got word that that was the staple of prison life, I told my mother I would like to spend the rest of my days in prison.
Now I have a new reason to want prison. (Please hold the butt-sex letters.) My new Scrabble partner is Luis, my upstairs neighbor who spent ten years in the pen playing Scrabble every day. He memorized the Scrabble dictionary and last night threw down TIMINGS on me for 80 points.
I'm not really dreaming up pathways to the brig. (I had a good chance last night with the undercover cops rounding up men on the corner and tossing them into an unmarked black van. The white officer was actually singing, "Let my people go." I went up to him and said, "What's going on here?" He averted his eyes, which I could tell from his tone was an eyeroll: "Police investigation, sir." It would have been so easy to join my neighbors in the van for a couple months of Scrabble. "I'm a member of this community and I demand to know what's going on here. What is it, drugs? Violence? Theft? Harmless prostitution?")
But having seen the way Luis memorized the Scrabble dictionary, I am searching my memory for concrete, measurable things I've learned in the past ten years. Let's see, I've honed some journalistic skills, learned the names of the members of the Hartford, Vt., school board, mastered the budget process in several small towns, familiarized myself with trucking laws and...my mind's drawing a blank. I haven't memorized a dictionary.
I should point out that Luis paid no attention to the meanings of the words he memorized. Every time he puts down a word I've never seen, I ask, "What's that mean?"
He shrugs. "I ain't too good on what they mean. But I know all of 'em."
Luis comes up to about my chin. His whole arm is the length of my forearm. There's a tattoo of a flower on his shoulder. I have no idea what he did, but to get a decade it had to be pretty bad. "Whatever it is, I know he didn't do it," jokes my roommate Claudia, who knows Luis's wife. But he's gentle as can be. His wife, double his size, punched him into unconsciousness once. "I wasn't talking to Booboo, I was talking to Pookie," he said during our game today, referring to his toddler and puppy, respectively, his voice like a child's.
"Quaige, what the fuck is that?" I say.
"I dunno," he said. "But it's in there." By "there" he means the phantom dictionary that hovers near our board. We don't have one because his kids disappeared it, but I've challenged him enough to know he's always right.
I tried to put down "tu," thinking of French, perhaps, and assuming most two-letter combos that vaguely sound like words are.
"That's no good," he said. "Ta, to, ut, nu, those are good, but T-U, that's no good."
He's kind enough to explain what's good and what's not instead of issuing a challenge that would lose me a turn. Sometimes when I'm stuck he asks to see my tiles and suddenly a word springs out of nothing.
In the kitchen his wife and three daughters (some of them steps) are cooking a lasagna. His wife's voice booms through the neighborhood. "What the fuck you doin' you little bitch-ho, you wanna smack?!" she yells at her seven-year-old. There seems to be an understanding in the house that she's walking the line between joking and not-joking, but everyone watches her carefully for the difference.
"Hey, watch your mouth in there!" I yell from the living room floor. There's a silence, then some female giggling from the kitchen. We don't know each other that well, but they know me well enough to have me down as a "loco."
"Damn, she got some pipes," I tell Luis.
He nods firmly, repeatedly, relieved someone has finally noticed.
Two daughters, a seven and a nine, periodically sit on the floor watching the game, taking a break from peeling potatoes. They and their little brother keep begging me to play Wii with them, but I tell them I have to concentrate. "I'm learning from the master," I say.
Today was my day, thanks to a lucky draw of letters, including all four S's.
"Go down and tell Claudia you stomped Luis's ass," he said. "She won't believe it."
Now I have a new reason to want prison. (Please hold the butt-sex letters.) My new Scrabble partner is Luis, my upstairs neighbor who spent ten years in the pen playing Scrabble every day. He memorized the Scrabble dictionary and last night threw down TIMINGS on me for 80 points.
I'm not really dreaming up pathways to the brig. (I had a good chance last night with the undercover cops rounding up men on the corner and tossing them into an unmarked black van. The white officer was actually singing, "Let my people go." I went up to him and said, "What's going on here?" He averted his eyes, which I could tell from his tone was an eyeroll: "Police investigation, sir." It would have been so easy to join my neighbors in the van for a couple months of Scrabble. "I'm a member of this community and I demand to know what's going on here. What is it, drugs? Violence? Theft? Harmless prostitution?")
But having seen the way Luis memorized the Scrabble dictionary, I am searching my memory for concrete, measurable things I've learned in the past ten years. Let's see, I've honed some journalistic skills, learned the names of the members of the Hartford, Vt., school board, mastered the budget process in several small towns, familiarized myself with trucking laws and...my mind's drawing a blank. I haven't memorized a dictionary.
I should point out that Luis paid no attention to the meanings of the words he memorized. Every time he puts down a word I've never seen, I ask, "What's that mean?"
He shrugs. "I ain't too good on what they mean. But I know all of 'em."
Luis comes up to about my chin. His whole arm is the length of my forearm. There's a tattoo of a flower on his shoulder. I have no idea what he did, but to get a decade it had to be pretty bad. "Whatever it is, I know he didn't do it," jokes my roommate Claudia, who knows Luis's wife. But he's gentle as can be. His wife, double his size, punched him into unconsciousness once. "I wasn't talking to Booboo, I was talking to Pookie," he said during our game today, referring to his toddler and puppy, respectively, his voice like a child's.
"Quaige, what the fuck is that?" I say.
"I dunno," he said. "But it's in there." By "there" he means the phantom dictionary that hovers near our board. We don't have one because his kids disappeared it, but I've challenged him enough to know he's always right.
I tried to put down "tu," thinking of French, perhaps, and assuming most two-letter combos that vaguely sound like words are.
"That's no good," he said. "Ta, to, ut, nu, those are good, but T-U, that's no good."
He's kind enough to explain what's good and what's not instead of issuing a challenge that would lose me a turn. Sometimes when I'm stuck he asks to see my tiles and suddenly a word springs out of nothing.
In the kitchen his wife and three daughters (some of them steps) are cooking a lasagna. His wife's voice booms through the neighborhood. "What the fuck you doin' you little bitch-ho, you wanna smack?!" she yells at her seven-year-old. There seems to be an understanding in the house that she's walking the line between joking and not-joking, but everyone watches her carefully for the difference.
"Hey, watch your mouth in there!" I yell from the living room floor. There's a silence, then some female giggling from the kitchen. We don't know each other that well, but they know me well enough to have me down as a "loco."
"Damn, she got some pipes," I tell Luis.
He nods firmly, repeatedly, relieved someone has finally noticed.
Two daughters, a seven and a nine, periodically sit on the floor watching the game, taking a break from peeling potatoes. They and their little brother keep begging me to play Wii with them, but I tell them I have to concentrate. "I'm learning from the master," I say.
Today was my day, thanks to a lucky draw of letters, including all four S's.
"Go down and tell Claudia you stomped Luis's ass," he said. "She won't believe it."
posted by Thon at 4:53 PM
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