Scrabble and Suzanne Pleshette

No, I don't think the two subjects are related. I was going to write about Scrabble when Joe the Cat walked over my laptop keyboard, wiped out the computer's ability to think logically, made me reboot, and geez on the AOL welcome page was a HEADLINE THAT HAD NOT BEEN THERE TWO MINUTES EARLIER! And it said Suzanne Pleshette had died. Say it isn't so. She was the real "Suzanne" icon from the seventies, not that blonde bimbo and her bio-identical hormones. Beautiful Suzanne with the brunette shag and the sardonic grin. Bob Newhart, his
incurable neurotics, his dimbulb neighbor, and his sane, sharptongued, laser witted wife. The REAL seventies, to me. It all came rushing back, the spider plants, the post-hippie let's nest
malaise, the midi skirts, Carole King, The Magic Pan, spinach quiche, white wine, backgammon....you know, the seventies for adults, SNL, first real jobs, Volvos, transactional analysis, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, wedge heels, decoupage, Annie Hall, bridge revival, the Seventies. I guess the Seventies are over......we were all grateful when they were over, no more disco, no more question that we were grown ups. But now even the seventies are starting to look nostalgic. Good bye Suzanne, you inspired my haircut and my hope for TV wives, heh. I was also a brunette with a shag haircut, for a brief year, before even a shag seemed too radical for the times. I really don't know what you did after "Newhart," but I am sure you had a great life,
you were never a victim.

My daughter Devon invited me to play Scrabble a couple of weeks ago. First I had to join Facebook, which made me hesitate a moment. I did not want to to join a league of predators, exhibitionists, lonely hearts, and a younger generation for whom privacy is some boring anachronism. However, I did want to play Scrabble, so I joined. Scrabble has been an important part of my life since my early teen years, when a family friend brought a gift back from England called "Travel Scrabble." Travel Scrabble was small, portable, and the letters were affixed to the board by little plastic legs. So you could play Scrabble anywhere, and you could have marathon games over days, and the cat could never scatter the letters. So we did have marathon games, my mother, my sister, my sister's friend Susan, and me. We were serious about the game, usually making well over 300 points and yes, occasionally using all seven letters. Later, I married a man who was not good at the game, and although he tried in vain to teach me chess, we were never able to offer each other "good game." So Scrabble fell by the wayside, and even though my mother and I played sporadically, on visits or vacations, I never reached the heights of competitive play I had enjoyed in my youth. During her last years, my mother played against herself constantly, using words I never knew existed, and "building the board" to her own satisfaction and advantage. It became impossible to play with her because a real opponent never cooperated like her alter ego, and she complained bitterly if I happened to draw the "good letters" or refused to sacrifice points to "open up the board." So I lost my chief Scrabble competitor; she preferred to play against herself. Now, for some reason I had never played Scrabble much with my two daughters. They seemed to have much more of a "life" than I did as a teenager and didn't have time or inclination to play Scrabble with their mother or Grandmother. Or perhaps it was my fault: I had a job, a house and a husband in addition to my children and there just didn't seem to be as many lazy Sunday afternoons for Scrabble playing in our lives. But now that has CHANGED. Devon and I play Scrabble, a couple of hundred miles apart. We can play anytime; we can play at different times. We don't have to be online together. We have the entire internet for a dictionary and we have a format that tells us if our word is invalid. Scrabble is back and it is back BIG. I am having a wonderful time; she says she is "addicted" in the hyperbole of the era. We are evenly matched and a lot of it is luck of the draw. But I must admit I was taken aback when Devon said the other night that the board was "not very open." However, I did not see her sacrificing points to open up the board. Shades of yesteryear. Ah Scrabble, let the conflict begin. May the one with the most altruism open up the board.