Andyland, USA

The evening was tense, and the air was heated. She looked at me, I looked at her. Sweat was heavy on my brow as I made my move. Slow and calculated, I took my time. R-A-T, I set the three letter tiles down on the Scrabble board right next to the bottom S in her SMARTS she had just played. Yes, RATS was the best I could do. She chuckled as she noted my amazing score of six on the score pad. I was loosing, she has a score of 239, and I had a score of now 86. “How is it you write, yet you’re so terrible at Scrabble?” she asked. “It’s one of the great mysteries of our time, a full segment will be devoted to the topic on ’60 Minutes’ sometime shortly.” I told her. It still baffles me, and anyone who has ever played Scrabble with me. Scrabble, Boggle, and any type of word search game I’m not great at. Yet give me a word association game, like that old beat up “$25,000 Pyramid” home game I still drag to parties, and I’m golden. “Pardon me, I’m going to run to the bathroom.” She excus

Having dinner with your friends should be an enjoyable experience. It shouldn't be a night of good food and smart conversation that is ruined by awkward comments. I met my friends for dinner on a Friday at seven. The restaurant was full, but not overwhelmingly so. As our waiter came over and took our drink orders, all was fine, we were making idle chatter while going over the menu. When the waiter returned I wasn't sure what I wanted, so I asked for a recommendation. “For you I'd suggest something from the lighter menu” they said, as they moved on to taking the order of the person to my right. A silence passed among us after the waiter left, we were looking at each other, then I spoke “Was that a dig at my weight?” As we thought about it, we came to the conclusion that it was. Odd, but we were super happy about the food coming, so we carried on with our rousing chatter. When the waiter came back to re-fill our drinks, they once again did another awkward attempt