Never say never

That's GOFUCKYOURSELF for the triple word score.

Gianni recently discovered Scrabble. He is enamored and wants to play every night. That's wonderful for two reasons, the most obvious is that it boosts his spelling and vocabulary. But the other is that he has unwittingly brought peace and diplomacy to an area of the Polito family where for 17 years, there has been none.

Long long ago when Rick and I first moved to California, we went on our first weekend getaway. We rented a cute little cottage in Mendocino for next to nothing. We spent the days beachcombing and mountain biking and the nights curled up in front of the fire. One night we attempted to play Scrabble. We failed. Or rather, Rick failed.

We had never played Scrabble together before, and let me tell you it was an eye-opener. I quickly realized that the love of my life was not only a great Scrabble player and a formidable opponent, but also the worst sport I had ever seen in my life. He gloated when he pulled ahead. He swore and sulked when he lost. It was like playing Scrabble with John McEnroe. I finally took the board, dumped the tiles, and swore that I would never engage in Scrabble with him again. And since then it's been a running joke, a sore spot, and common knowledge that it's best for the relationship and mankind that we leave the game box untouched on the shelf.

Since Gianni started his love affair with Scrabble, he's played with me. He's played with Rick. But he'd never played with both of us--until last night. After much deliberation, we decided to think of the children. We established word game detente and Scrabbled together for the first time in nearly two decades.

And it worked. Rick was a good sport. He only said, "you BITCH," once, when I blindsided him with a huge triple-word score. And I could tell he was using every bit of restraint to not jump up on the table and do the cabbage patch when he pulled within three points of me. He's all grown up. He didn't even make a fuss when I crushed him like a grape at the end, which is of course not important to me at all because I'm not competitive in the least. (WOOO!)

We're ushering in a new era of peace, prosperity and Scrabble nights that we hope will last for decades to come. It's amazing what you can put aside for the good of the children.