On a cold afternoon, my 13-year-old granddaughter and I voted “no” on doing anything outside. Katherine and I had already watched the rom com “Sleepless in Seattle,” our follow-up from crying through “An Affair to Remember.”

Looking for something to do, I spied our Scrabble game. Like most people my age, I grew up playing board games. Hand-held computers weren’t yet invented, so board games were the way to have fun on a cold or rainy day.

Part of the fun was the inevitable arguments about who was cheating or not waiting for one’s turn.

In our house, the favorite board game was Monopoly. The white box was worn at the edges, and the number of $100 bills was slim, but we always managed to find two dice.

The arguing started at the beginning – who got what token. Nobody wanted the token that looked like an iron. All of us wanted the race car or the horse, and the loser had to settle for whatever was left.

We also made up some of our own rules to keep the game fun. A $500 bill went in the middle, awarded to anyone who rolled “snake eyes,” two one’s. All fines went in the middle as well. Who ever landed on “Free Parking” got the bucks in the middle.

Monopoly wasn’t the only game where we invented rules. In Scrabble, we could swap played tiles as long as the word was still a legal one. This was a way to use the eight-point “J” a few times.

Of course, every word over five letters was challenged, going back to part of the fun of games, arguing. The paperback Scrabble dictionary was well worn as was our paper list of two-letter words.

Mousetrap was fun until we either grew tired of going step-by-step to watch the cage wiggle down or we lost too many pieces to play the game.

We loved Clue but somebody always cheated and peeked at the answer before we could figure out if Professor Plum or Mr. Green was the murderer.

We excelled at card games. Our Grandma Marguerite was an outstanding card player, and she taught us how to play. There was no mercy from Grandma because she liked to win.

I remember many afternoons playing gin rummy, hearts or spades with her. One of the hardest card games to learn and play was canasta.

Even before we started accusing each other of cheating, we had to come up with four full decks of cards.

Then there were the rules, and I think there’s about a hundred rules in canasta. Red threes meant something different than black threes, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg for canasta rules.

Usually, our card games were much simpler. There was spoon, and we loved that because we were free to lunge at a sibling, pulling hair, scratching at eyes and wrestling until we got their spoon.

War was another favorite card game because somebody could annihilate someone else. No mercy was shown.

Of all the games we played, Scrabble remains one of my favorites.

Katherine is a formidable foe in Scrabble. The scores were neck and neck until I got lucky with a “z” word on a triple-word score.

Neither one of us will remember the final score at the end. What I will remember is the quiet moments we had while playing Scrabble, time thinking, talking about movies and life while choosing new tiles.

Playing board games with siblings usually entails arguing and bickering. Playing with grandchildren is an opportunity to pass on traditions and make new memories.

Without the hair pulling.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.