S C R A B B L E

Moesha's discovered Scrabble, & loves to play it. Only problem is, we've not had the game, & hadn't gotten to picking one up at the store. So shayla made it into a learning opprotunity. After some Google-snooping, she found a site with the diagram, another with the letter count (including scores). We gathered up some construction paper, a ruler, some color pencils, and packing tape. There was some disagreement & firm talking before moesha understood that she really was capable of measuring lines on a piece of paper, but she proved herself to be up to the task.

So now we've got a home-made Scrabble game, perfect for travel. We were playing it yesterday while Master was on the computer, taking care of things and web-snooping. Shayla's invited him to play more than once, but he's consistently refused, saying we'd hate playing with him. With his vocabulary & competitiveness, he'd mop the floor with us. Though shayla believes that we'd enjoy the floor-mopping.

Seems that occasionally we wind up with really crappy letters. Yesterday was a perfect example. About midway through the game shayla came up with an awful combination..C, I, U, O, I, U, O. Just about that time Master emerged from the office, and stood observing for a minute while he looked over the board & letters. And actually settled down on the floor with us to put in his 2 cents' worth. So now it was Master vs. shayla and moesha.

As predicted, he waltzed all over us. We were down to the last letters, Master had three left, moesha and shayla had six. After some serious thinking Master came up with ajupi. Ajupi. He claimed that it was a mammal, lived in the Brazilian rain forest, with a prehensile tail, that ate insects and spiders. That had been discovered in the 50's (or did he say 60's?).

Mmmhmm, right. Master's said any number of times, 'Google is your friend'. And shayla's gotten very well acquainted with Wikipedia. So while he's further describing this mysterious primate to moesha, shayla'd already sat down on the computer to do some snooping. It's not in Dictionary.com; it's not in Wikipedia. It's not anything but a sly creation of Master's imagination. He just wanted to use that last letter.

Moesha didn't realize until the next day that it was a joke. She thought it was funny when she did find out, though. That girl's a character.

shayla