Wednesday, January 7, 2009

A brief word about the "bats" thing

Wondering what's up with all the bat references?

Several years ago we started having regular Scrabble sessions with our good friends Ray and Brooke.  Since we only lived about a block apart we could visit, have dinner, and play a nice game when we all had a free evening.


I didn't play Scrabble a lot as a kid.  I'd love to tell you it's because manly children don't play Scrabble but I was probably sitting in front of my Commodore 64 using a hex editor to alter the attributes of one of my characters in Wizard's Crown instead of doing something manly.  Suffice it to say that my tactical understanding of Scrabble is roughly equal to my tactical understanding of softball (which is an embarrassing story for another time).

And based on a cursory review of this blog, my spelling is not that great anyway


All of that to say that I had a tray full of letters that I couldn't do anything with, plus a blank tile.

Which I used to convert "bat" to "bats."  

This led to a marathon session of chop busting that is still referenced to this day.  In fact, Ray and Brooke adopted a bat at Carlsbad Caverns and named it Chadwick.  I hope that bat never commits such a faux pas.

(Oh, and in case you're curious - Brooke would regularly whup us at Scrabble.  She'd put down two tiles and make words in 8 different directions on a triple word score.  It scared me a little.)

6 comments:

Blonde Assassinator said...

Well now that my identity has been compromised, I guess I can stop pretending that I was fooling anyone and write some "real" comments. (And maybe one day make my blogger profile real.)

I have a fond memory of playing Scrabble with the family during a ski trip in Aspen (At least I think it was Aspen.) I was no more than 10 years old, and the family was playing Scrabble one evening after a day of skiing. Jenny somehow got the biggest point letters in the game at one time and spelled "Zygote." So of course I had no idea what that was, and upon asking my Dad turned bright red and left it up to Jenny to explain it to me since it was "her" word. (Now if I was 10-ish then she was 15-ish.) I don't remember what she said to satisfy my curiosity, but I do find it a bit ironic now considering her occupation.

Brooke said...

LOL. Much as I would like to claim credit, I fear you overstated this a little. I remember ONE win, and that was the "bats" game. :)

chadwick said...

Blonde Assassinator,

Just think - if she'd had a blank tile she could have spelled zygotes.

It's funny to hear that your dad's aversion to medical talk isn't a recent phenomenon.

Oh, and Jen says she doesn't remember ever spelling a word as good as "zygote" during a scrabble game.

chadwick said...

Brooke,

I have to admit that I didn't keep a running total - maybe if I'd been blogging then we could consult the record book.

I can say, however, that I never won.

Unknown said...

Man, Wizard's Crown... I never got very far in that game because it was so freakin' hard! And Eternal Dagger was even worse -- but it had neat box art and in those days that was why you picked something up off the shelf :).

chadwick said...

Actually a friend and I pooled our money and ordered the game out of a magazine - there wasn't a computer store closer than Fayetteville, which was 60 miles away. And yeah, it was ridiculously difficult.

I've actually thought about downloading a C64 emulator and playing it again - but I think I'll stick with NetHack :)