I'm Losing against My Grandson, and Loving It
/The Boston Globe
My grandson, Adam, who is 14, is annihilating me. We are playing "Words with Friends 2." a game similar to Scrabble, only it's faster and more fun because it can be played on a phone, tablet, or a computer, anywhere, any time.
Sometimes we play on our cellphones sitting side by side on the family room couch, but most times we play when he's in one place and I'm in another. I'm always begging him to play because I'm obsessed. I text him day and night, though now that school has begun, school hours are off limits. "ADAM. WHERE ARE YOU??? IT'S YOUR TURN!!!" I write, in capital letters with a lot of exclamation marks. And because he's a good kid, he stops what he's doing and makes a word with a gazillion points, which inevitably turns me into a head banging, I can't believe you keep beating me Rumpelstiltskin.
How does he always get the most points for his letters? Triple points. Triple word scores. How do you do this? I ask, and he shrugs.
He's been playing longer than I have, he tells me. He's been playing with his other grandmother all summer and annihilating her, too. "Is there anyone who beats you?" I ask.
"Aunt Margaret," he tells me. "She is amazing."
I want to be amazing, too.
For his third birthday, Adam got a Melissa & Doug Farm Wooden Cube Puzzle. A cube puzzle is not an ordinary, one-picture puzzle. It's six different puzzles in one. To complete it involves rotating 16 cubes with different images on each side, then putting them together to make a picture. The puzzle Adam got could be made into a cow, pig, sheep, chicken, duck, and horse. You complete one, and then you start over and begin another.
I remember sitting on the couch in his house watching him turn those cubes over and over, again and again, selecting and rejecting animal parts that weren't the correct animal parts. I saw not just his effort but his patience. Kids were all around him, eating cake, playing, laughing. He stuck to the puzzle. He completed the cow. I was amazed. "I don't think I could do that," I said to his father. And when I got down on the floor and tried? My first effort ended with a creature that was half cow, half lamb.
Adam thought I did this on purpose and laughed.
But there was no intent in my mistake.
I'm not good at puzzles. That's what I told myself then and that's what I've told myself my whole life. But what I'm realizing now is that what I'm not good at is patience.
Patience is why Adam wins at games. He studies the picture of a puzzle before he begins to piece it together. He looks at the colors and the shapes and the borders. He takes his time. With "Words with Friends 2," he studies the whole board and explores his options. He doesn't just put down the first word he sees. He waits. He plans. He looks ahead.
I do not. I see a puzzle and think, where do I start? I can't do that. I see a word or two words and that's all I see. I don't think, if I do this, if I get these points, he might do that and get even more points.
A few years ago, Adam taught me to play chess. This required a ton of patience. "The rook can move horizontally or vertically," he must have told me a hundred times. And still I would ask him, "The rook can move what way, Adam?" Rooks and pawns and bishops, oh my. Still I downloaded an app and practiced. I drove Adam crazy then, too. "Let's play chess," I said every time he walked into the house. All that summer and fall we played. And all that summer and fall he won.
Right now he's beating me in a Words with Friends 2 game by 66 points. I have only four letters left. It's his turn. But he's at school.
I am studying these letters. I am trying hard to be patient. But I am not patient. I am not thinking about where I should put my letters. I am thinking, it's almost 2 o'clock. School ends soon. I wonder if Adam is going straight home. I can't wait for Adam to get home.
I am thinking that even though he beats me constantly, I am always eager and impatient to play him again.
