"Words With Friends." Words With "Old Friends." Words With Old Friends Who "CHEAT!" (And next book excerpt)

(post and pictures copyright 2012, Dawn Weber)

In a quest for new and unique ways to waste time, I have started playing Words With Friends.


It's all Craig's fault.


Play Words With Friends, he said. It will be fun, he said.


Yep, Craig Gobel - high school classmate. Football player. Always smiling. Wanted me to play Words With Friends. I could tell because of the notification on my phone:


"Craig Gobel wants you to play Words With Friends!"


I had just installed the WWF app the day before, in order to do something, ANYTHING with my son, the Hobo, a boy perpetually glued to - and enamored of - electronics. The game also includes a handy feature where you can chat with fellow players. Exciting! A way to "communicate" with my son! Perhaps he'd even "answer."

Yes, every day, he's "shufflein."

I have to admit - I groaned a little bit when I received Craig's Words WF invitation. Sorry, Craig. It wasn't him - I just didn't want to get pulled into another online game, another time-suck, after kicking a particularly addictive Farmville habit not long ago:

Lord, I miss my little cartoon cornfields. And cartoon kegs.

When I saw Craig's WWF request, I thought back to the good old days in school and how he was always in my homeroom. At the time, our names were alphabetically close, so he sat beside me in the early mornings as I tried - drooling, and in vain - to stay awake after the previous night's McDonald's shift. 

I liked Craig, always smiling. I didn't want to ruin his smile by denying his request.


"Craig Gobel wants you to play Words With Friends!"


As I recall, he was a pretty good football player. I was not blessed with the, how you say, "athleticism of any sort." I had three talents in high school: 

1. Spelling/vocabulary;
2. Working at McDonald's;
3. Attending parties.

Of these skills, number 3, I felt, was the most important.


But I was a pretty damn good speller, usually runner-up at the school spelling bee. A solid second place, that's always, always, AL-F*CKING-WAYS! me. 

And with 22 years of experience in journalism, marketing, corporate and state communications, words - along with photos - are pretty much my life. I figured I could take on Craig Gobel, football star.

Play Words With Friends and beat Craig, I said. It will be fun, I said.

We begin, and pretty much out of the gate, Craig plays the word "LOGE." I am displeased. I tell him so.

Yes, I'm a pretty good speller, az u can n see.

But I shake it off, power through, and come back with "DAHLIA" for about 18 points.  

Take that, football star.

He steals my "DAHLIA" pluralizing it with an S and using the s to make "SNOW," thus earning something like 600 points. 

I hate him.

Despite my threats of violence, we keep going, using such scholarly vocabulary as "PERV," "PEES" and "WARP."  Our teachers would be proud.



Craig Gobel apparently has his own gott-dang dictionary, which includes the alleged words ...FER and GROD and TI. You might say, "FER, GROD and TI are in Webster's, Dawn - they ARE real words." But I've never seen them. Therefore, they don't exist.

I'm pretty sure Craig Gobel is just making shit up. Craig Gobel apparently has his own reference source, called the "Fictionary."

Craig Gobel cheats.

In the end, much time was wasted and many LOLs exchanged. 

And Craig Gobel, former classmate, football star, jock extraordinaire, beat the living snot out of me with a score of, like, 7,013 to 142.

Have I mentioned he cheats?

But I bet he's still smiling.

Well played, football star. Well played.

________________________________________________________

I promised you a chapter a week (or there-abouts), here's an excerpt of the chapter I wrote this week, "Reasons to Stay in the Closet"

". . . While eating, I thought of all the good times in my closet, where I might possibly also store some cookies at Christmas . . . a tub of frosting during the summer . . . maybe a bottle of wine when my mother visits. 

Do not judge me.


Emergency sugar, emergency wine - whatever. It's the secret bomb shelter of a middle aged woman.


Yeah, this closet is too small for clothes. But the size makes it a great mini-vacation for one - nobody bothering me, asking for things, taking my chocolate. It could use something in the way of cookie dough, so I'm thinking of putting in a little fridge . . . perhaps a wet bar. The conversation pit will go over there, past the Nikes . . ."

Stay tuned!