The Boggle Date: Part 2

Tales from the life of the Keeper of the Blog

*David and I doubled with his roommate (also weird) and his nearly-mute date. Though I had many mutual friends with the two guys, I had never met this girl. (And since she did not produce a full sentence through entire course of the evening, I can still say that that I have never really met her.)

First, the four of us made cookies. The boys had somehow failed to get a mixing bowl for making the cookies (they had no suitable vessels for mixing dough in their apartment), so we actually went back to my apartment to get a bowl, which I thought was incredibly awesome.

While the cookies were baking, we played some games. I was pretty happy about the prospect of playing games because I'm good at games. I am from a game-playing family and can win just about anything against non-game-players.

First game: Pit. Good. I was raised playing Pit. I can play Pit in my sleep. I can kick your trash at Pit.

I lost Pit.

I lost by a lot.

Silent girl won, and I was more than a little miffed because Silent Girl couldn't utter more than one word at a time (which may have worked to her advantage since you only need one-word utterances in Pit). So, sore loser that I am, I suggested we switch to Boggle. Everyone else agreed to this.

However, I failed to mention that I am a Boggle champion. Unlike Pit, Boggle is a game of knowledge and skill. Boggle requires a good vocabulary. I have this vocabulary. I can beat nearly anyone I know at Boggle without even trying. Silent Girl had never played Boggle before--even better. I would crush her. And David. And his roommate. I would crush them.

I did crush them. I crushed them all. I more than crushed them. I pulverized them. I blew them out of the water. I blew them out of the solar system.

They were three of the four worst Boggle players I had ever seen. Silent Girl couldn't spell even basic words so most of the words on her page didn't even count.

At first, I was quick to tell the others when I had the same words as them. Quick to tell them when the word they found wasn't actually on the board. Quick to point out every word they should cross off their list. Then I read my word list, which was very long and included many very long words. They didn't question my words. They were in awe.

But as I pulled farther and farther ahead, I started to feel a little bad about how poorly they were all doing and a little guilty about having suggested the game I knew I would win without warning them that I would win. So I stopped making them cross out words. I stopped calling them out on misspellings. I did everything I could let Silent Girl get at least a point or two each round. I even handicapped myself, so that I only wrote down words with four or more letters (not just three). Toward the end of the game I imposed a five-letter handicap on myself. I still did awesome.

By the end of the game, I was so embarrassed for them for being so bad at the game and for myself for being such a jerk, that I refused to share my final score--it was more than double the other three players' scores combined. David found my paper and (since he is a very nice person) congratulated me.

The cookies baked into large, flat frisbees. They were the worst-looking cookies I had ever seen.