Bananas

Even the most casual of readers (not that this blog has any) should know how much I like to win and how much of a nerd I am.  Put these two together, and you've got my love of word games.  Not anagrams.  I hate those.  But games along the Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagram variety.  My school friends did not know this (unlike my Bo' friends- I love playing Bananagram with Jenny and Karina!).  They just discovered that this past weekend when we had a pre-graduation retreat.  What started in the plans as a camping trip quickly became spending the weekend playing board games and reading in a really, really nice house on the water.  Exactly how I like it. 

After I won the third straight round of Bananagrams, they imposed a handicap on me.  (I also have a 4-letter handicap in Boggle.  I hate playing with equally competitive people who won't just let me win but have to make life difficult for me)  They may not have expected to be whupped in Bananagram (these, after all, are all very smart people with very high GPAs and expansive vocabulary), but they knew about my pitiful tolerance (for alcohol, not people of other cultures).  So they made me take a sip before I could say "peel" to get more letters.  Did it slow me down?  I did narrowly lose one round but then won 2 more.  However, within 15 minutes, I had also downed 2 glasses of wine.  Even if my awesome winning skills were not hampered, my face was beet red and the strategy was not sustainable.  We tried switching to eating Wheat Thins, but chewing crackers quickly while spelling words and shouting "peel" proved to be a choking hazard.  And I had to settle for retiring, knowing that I am the greatest Bananagrams player these H'bomb losers have ever seen.