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There Is No Jackie. There Is Only Mindee.

Last night I did something daring: I called my old creditor.

Calling an old creditor is not unlike calling an ex boyfriend. You sincerely doubt it will help anything and are actually pretty sure it will just end badly with you nursing a box of Tastykakes in the fetal position, but you can’t help picking up the phone and trying to see what can come of it.

I’d take a moment to tell you about why I was calling, but it turns out that the archives from my old blog (4 years old, to be precise) put it quite nicely. This is an excerpt of my life outlook just after I joined credit counseling:

“I’d like to think that the automatic withdrawal that takes the wind right out of my gut each month is actually flying off to some magical land with ponies and bon bons where it is multiplied by small leprachauns who love me and understand the mistakes of my past and thus decrease my debt by a severe fraction of its original sum. Unfortunately, it just goes to some jerks who want me to pay 15 dollars for a 5 dollar pizza I bought in 2005.

Yeah, I’ll admit it: the bulk of my credit card debt is food. And clothes I bought because I got fatter and needed some. Yes. I’m paying three times as much on items that did nothing but hurl me into a fat depression. Once upon a time I ate an entire Freschetta pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s every night for dinner and I won’t be able to forget it for another four years. It’s justice in a disturbing and dirty form.” -me, circa 2007

There are a few things to take away from this. First, I didn’t spell leprechaun correctly. That’s upsetting. Second, I have a longstanding unhealthy relationship with food. That’s obvious. I don’t think I’m fooling anybody there.

But the third and only relevant part is how frustrated I was with my credit situation, which required me to be in credit counseling thanks to poor college spending and a little card that paid for everything so that I didn’t have to. As a result, here I am in 2011 calling a creditor with a delinquency and begging forgiveness. It feels dirty. It feels low. But last night over the phone, I got Lucy the Credit Sorceress to open up to me about her deep-seated secrets of debt forgiveness. She laid out a plan that is fail proof for getting a nasty note off my credit report from about 5 years ago and sprinting forward in delight of my shiny, new, improved credit score.

I really hate doing stuff like this. I hate calling people, I hate talking about stupid rules that humans have put on themselves to make each other miserable over things that don’t matter but will make you absolutely want to kill yourself if you don’t pay them mind once in a while (credit, day jobs, taking showers). So in order to make the experience more bearable for me, I whip out Mindee.

Mindee is a little character I put on when I have to do things I don’t feel like doing. She loves people, she loves rules, and she just wants everyone to get along. She’s super chipper, super considerate, and super smart, and when I use her on the phone, she’s infectiously pleasant and efficient. She gets Comcast to reimburse my bill, she gets angry customers to relax and breathe, and she gets Lucy the Credit Sorceress to unlock the ironclad vaults of my credit history to make revisions.

Now I know you’re asking yourself whether I’ve developed a strange psychological issue, and the answer is that yes, perhaps I have. But I’d also argue that you would be far more effective in life if you would also consider creating your own Mindee. Think about something you absolutely hate doing and then conjure up an example of the kind of person who loves doing that thing and is incredibly effective at it. Then pretend to be them and tackle the problem. Return to your natural form and assess your results.

Really – try it out. You might slowly lose your mind and blur the worlds of yourself and your alter ego, but that’s totally fine so long as you’re accomplishing everything you need to accomplish in your adult life because let’s face it – no one really stays sane throughout.

It’s a classic case of ‘fake it til you make it’ and it’s basically what’s running my life right now.

I’m not even sure anymore how much of me Mindee owns by now, but she sure is doing a great job getting my credit sorted out lately while the real Jackie is curled up somewhere playing World of Warcraft and eating Freschetta pizza and Ben and Jerry’s. ♣

Today’s RAK: A Get Well Effort

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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I’m in Harry Potter Denial.

6 Jul

Photo by "emilyonasunday". Click to check out her Flickr Photostream. Stuff in the photo by "Nan Lawson". Check out Nan's Etsy page here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/NanLawson

Every year a new Harry Potter movie comes out I pretend not to care, but I totally do.

I’ve pretended not to care from the beginning. Not that I have anything against standing up for wizards, and magic, and other nerdgasm ingredients, (My Dad’s a Dungeon Master), I just feel kind of silly getting as excited for it as I do.

But I do. I really do.

I get less excited than I was for the release of the first World of Warcraft expansion, and less excited than I was for any of the Lord of the Rings movies, but nonetheless, I get excited. I could pee my pants when I think about trying to avoid Facebook from the midnight opening until I get to see it. Pee. My. Pants.

I’d go see it at midnight, but I promised my dad I’d see it with him and old people can’t be out after midnight or they turn into goblins.

I kind of struggle right before a big release like this because it usually inspires a lot of social media chatter about that parts will be included or left out, and I don’t know anything about all that jazz because I didn’t read the books. Sometimes I feel like the only person on earth who didn’t. I started reading a little bit of the first book back when I was in high school but it occurred to me that it would be quite a commitment to start them because I had no way of knowing when they would stop being written.

I don’t just blindly sign up for that sort of nonsense.

So I instead waited for the movie to be released and loved it. I’m not a Potterhead or anything. I don’t buy the capes, I don’t grimace through the gross flavored jelly beans just to laugh at eating something that tastes like earwax, and I don’t get excited about the relationship between Hermione and Ron.

To be honest, I always thought Hermione and Harry had a pretty clear thing going until a loyal reader showed me the error of my ways.

But I’ll admit that I’ve watched the trailer a few times just to dry to quiet the soft, persistent thunder of excitement in my belly. I almost don’t care that someone will unwrap candy during the movie, talk right behind my ears, and get up to go to the bathroom in my row in a very intense scene. Or that someone within my field of vision will emit a strong glow from their cell phone as they text throughout the movie. …or that there is inevitably someone near me explaining the movie as it’s happening to someone right beside them.

Actually, you know what?

Maybe I can wait. ♣

Today’s RAK: some inspiration for a friend who needs to reach a goal.

Tags: 365 Project, harry potter, Humor, life, movies, musings, postaday2011

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My Night Job Is in a Brothel

5 Jul

After an evening in hell with the Competitive Scrabble Club last week, you’d think it a struggle to find something more exhausting and stressful, but I did: Barbacking.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, ya’ll.

I’ve been fortunate enough lately to have readers suggest ideas for my Lollipop Tuesdays not only online (via the comment section on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday” page), but also those who know me personally via text and in-person. Some of them have even gone so far as to arrange the events for me so that all I have to do is show up and humiliate myself.

Like this past week, for example.

Thanks to a loyal reader, I was invited to my favorite bar downtown (read: only one I go to) to be subjected to barbacking for an evening. For those of you who need a clue, barbacking is basically playing slave to the bartender. You wash dishes, prep food, clean, pour beers, stock the cooler, get ice… you get the idea. So last Wednesday I worked my regular 8-5, and then headed downtown to be treated like a lowly peasant from 9-3. And let me assure you: working an 8am-3am is not an experience I treasured.

I think most of my suck factor was wrapped up in the fact that I never drank in college. I had my first taste of alcohol at 22 years old, so I had little to offer in the way of, well, anything. I’m a fast learner and I’ve had a lot of jobs for my age, so the evening was like an intense crash course for a job I never intended on returning to.

It was pure craziness.

Luckily, the same bartender works every Wednesday evening (open mic night) and luckily, I tip him well. Because there was nothing but his good graces that could carry me through an evening of stupidity. And besides almost knocking over an entire rack of crystal, tossing out someone’s unfinished beer at the end of the night when they were still lingering around, and general ignorance about every aspect of bartending in general, I’d say I did pretty well. A lot of it also had to do with the fact that I’m a regular, so the bar mostly consisted of friends, other Wednesday regulars, and (believe it or not) blog fans who got the word I’d be there.

Apparently there’s nothing like seeing someone humiliated to spice up your mid-week nights.

Photo by "Lauren" - click the image to check out her review of the restaurant, complete with pictures. You can even check out the Madame's headboard that now serves as the back of the bar.

Oh yeah – did I mention the place used to be a brothel?

Part of what makes my favorite hangout so darn cool is that back in the day it was the backdrop for scandals of all shapes and sizes. It has a section upstairs labeled “The Madame’s Room”. But the best feature is one I didn’t discover until I played barback. In one of the dining rooms, there is another bar with a mirrored wall behind it. And if you push on it just right, the entire wall opens up to reveal another room. It’s a bona fide secret doorway. And if I have to work a 14-hour day to get to interact with a genuine hidden doorway, I’m so okay with that.

So all in all, I’d say things went well. Nothing broke, nothing burned, and nothing got sent back. And I got to learn a lot of pretty cool new stuff. Like the fact that most of bartending is cleaning. And since I’ve always kind of been interested in bartending, I’m thankful that this past week has shown me the error of my ways. I hate cleaning. Also, I totally suck at polishing stemware.

But allow me to leave you all with the most important thing I took away from being put through the ringer:

Tip your bartender well. You never know when you might end up on their side of the bar. ♣

*A hearty thanks to Jeff Holt of Papa J’s Centro in downtown Pittsburgh for allowing me to come threaten his crystal, his customers, and his good name. Authentic Italian food, great service, and a super cool locale. What could be better than drinking in a refurbished brothel? Nothing, that’s what. If you’re in Western PA, you should do yourself a favor and pay the place a visit. All pertinent info can be acquired here.*

Today’s RAK: A front door surprise for a few random fellow apartment dwellers.

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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Family Holidays Are Making Me Fat

4 Jul

Photo by "mind on fire". Click the image to check out their Flickr Photostream.

It is so incredibly difficult to celebrate a holiday amongst family without being a fatty fat.

A ‘fatty fat’ is a technical term for one who feels ashamedly fat.

This weekend has been filled to the brim with a variety of fatty fat activities, including (but not limited to) alcohol-spiked fruit dip, appetizers of all kinds, hearty cholesterol-filled breakfasts every morning, drinks in the evening and one whopper of a July 4th picnic meal that included German potato salad, 3-inch thick grilled steaks, salmon, corn-on-the-cob, and strawberry shortcake.

Lord, help my arteries.

The problem with celebrating with family is that there are innate obstacles that prevent you from maintaining your diet/healthy lifestyle/attempt to consume less than 3,000 calories in a day. Let’s review some:

The food is damn delicious. Your family is all in one place, which means that somewhere in that mix is someone who has the most recent or most authentic version of your grandma’s something-or-other and it’s fantastic. And fattening. Because when your grandmother had it back in her day, kids still ran around outside to burn off calories instead of sitting inside playing a game about running around and burning off calories.

The guilt is overwhelming. With all the blood, sweat, stress, and tears that your family puts into preparing food, you can at least eat it. Who cares if you cry? Who cares if you have a high cholesterol? No one, that’s who. Eat it, say it’s delicious, and then go to the spare bedroom and rock yourself in a fetal position. That is, if you can move your fat far enough out of the way to do so.

The skillful use of classic bandwagon tactics. Everyone else is eating it and if you don’t, you’ll make them feel badly about themselves. So stop ruining everyone’s good time. Does this sound familiar?: “Look at grandpa – grandpa has a slew of health problems. He’s practically dead already and he’s decided that by golly, he’s going to enjoy life. So why can’t you? Lighten up and live a little.”

You tell yourself you deserve it. The reason doesn’t matter. You have a ton of them at the ready: you work hard all year long, you never see so-and-so, you never do such-and-such, you’ll just cheat this weekend, you’ll skip breakfast tomorrow, you’ve been doing so well, you should celebrate your recent weight loss, life is short, and on and on without end. You want delicious food, you find a reason you deserve delicious food, you eat delicious food. And then cradle your gut in your arms.

This time only comes once a year. This would be fine if it were true, but it’s not. This time comes lots of times a year. New Year’s, Easter, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas – about every other month there’s an excuse to get everyone together and gorge on a smorgasbord of fatty foods. And not to mention the holidays you split between families. I can’t tell you how many times my stomach has been subjected to two Christmases or two Thanksgivings. I’ve committed sins of the stomach that even a year’s worth of running couldn’t right, and I’m willing to bet you have too.

And so I’ll be driving back to my house today with the car hanging just a little lower than it did when I came. As if the food weren’t tempting enough the first time around, the backseat will be loaded with enough fatty fat leftovers to fuel me for a week. And if I wouldn’t eat them cold right out of the fridge, they might actually make it that long.

I suppose I should go about setting up a rigorous fat-blasting routine for these next few weeks. I can’t imagine how long it will take me to get back to where I was before any holiday fat madness ensued. Even if I get back to that place, I’ll have to blast even more fat away in preparation for upcoming holidays.

After all, Labor Day is right around the corner. ♣

Today’s RAK: Planning some heavy relaxation time for someone in need.

Tags: 365 Project, family, food, holidays, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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Deep Inside the Hell Bowels of Sephora

3 Jul

Yesterday, I ventured into the dark, grimy bowels of Sephora to whip my sad and scrappy makeup bag into something socially acceptable.

If you have a penis, you should know that Sephora is an upscale makeup store. You’re welcome.

I don’t like Sephora. I try to avoid going there as much as possible. While the makeup itself is enough to make me orgasm on entry, I simply can’t stand the black suit saleswomen getting up in my grill about whether I’m using a good primer before I put on my foundation. I don’t like their insinuation that I should use the makeup they like to use, and I don’t like the pressure of being talked to.

Also, all of them sort of look like whore clowns.

Exhibit A: Sample Whore Clown. Photo by "br1dotcom". Click to check out their Flickr Photostream, which also features some ridiculously adorable pictures of a French Bulldog.

I’ve been trying to avoid shopping in Sephora for a long time now and as a result have bounced around to several different department store makeup brands trying to find things that stop small children from screaming bloody horror when they see my face and that stay on all day long.

My face has needs. Real needs.

I would avoid the store entirely and shop online, but I can only do that to refill something I already know I like. I can’t ever get a new color or a new brand because without the luxury of sampling, there’s no way to know if the super expensive makeup I’m about to buy is actually going to bring me any sort of shallow, material happiness.

Seeing as how I used to work at Victoria’s Secret – the ultimate in black suit pressure saleswomen – you’d think I’d be able to the Sephora challenge. But I can’t. I’m just awful at it. I spend most of my time discreetly moving from one color to another without looking like I’m actually interested in what I’m looking at. A face that shows interest is a face that shows weakness. So I casually swipe a bit of a sample onto my finger, mosey over to the mirror, and try to look casual about painting my face. It’s quick and odd – like when I try to check my armpits for a suspicious odor. I pretend I’m doing something else altogether, but the trained eye is incredibly aware.

My casual ruse was almost foiled by my inability to locate the disposal bin for the samples. I had all the eye shadow sticks, square wipes, and gloss applicators I could possibly hope for but not one single trash can in sight. Everything blends in there. It’s all black, white, and bright lights. People shouldn’t even be allowed to drive for at least 15 minutes after they leave.

So, unable to find a garbage can for all the pieces of used makeup wipes in my hands and with each of my fingers entirely coated in a different makeup color from my ‘casual swiping’ as I moseyed by the products, I resolved to continue to feign disinterest and certainty and promptly shoved all the wipes into my purse. Heaven forbid I ask where the garbage can is and get asked what kind of airbrush foundation I’m using.

In case you’re interested, the answer is none – airbrushed makeup is for whore clowns.

I eventually emerged from the innards of the elitist makeup shop with my mental sanity (almost entirely) in tact. I also somehow acquired twice as many products and I initially entered for. Which is a bit of a quandary, seeing as how not a single person approached me during my browse.

I would have felt badly about my terrible display of self-control if I hadn’t gotten a free sample of mascara that blew my mind and a free bottle of super yummy-smelling body wash because it’s my birthday month. Those little bits of pleasure made the price tag of my purchases not even noticeable until I got home, at which time I wallowed in self-despair. I tried to make myself feel better by painting my face with my new makeup, but it mixed my tears to produce a sort of awkward-girl-upset-that-she’s-not-prom-queen look.

I’m now one day past my initial buyer’s regret and the feeling is not subsiding. I should have known better. I should have stayed away. But hey – lesson learned. …Again. Shop Sephora online or don’t shop it at all. It looks like I’ll be replacing my makeup with the same exact colors and brands for several years to come.

I’ll need some time to muster up the strength again. ♣

Today’s RAK: Mailing a thoughtful gift to someone I’ve only just met for an hour.

Tags: 365 Project, beauty, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011, shopping

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I Should Buy Myself a Cake.

2 Jul

It appears I’ve neglected to acknowledge something here.

I have passed the halfway point, folks. I’m over the edge. I’m over 50% finished with the postaday2011 challenge.

Apparently, I'm likening this man running a marathon to me writing my blog. I am the man - lonely, tired, and pressing toward the finish. And apparently with only a few scattered, somewhat-paying-attention attendees. Photo by "Eneko Astigarraga". Click to check out his Flickr Photostream.

Typically, I’d celebrate such an occasion by looking back over the last 180-something posts and picking out my favorite ones. But unfortunately, I flipped through my 2nd quarter accomplishments only to find that I have written nothing I can be more excited about than the favorite posts I already acknowledge in my one-third celebration.

Personally, that realization saddens me. What if my best posts were written back in the day when I had seven subscribers?

Yes, I used to only have seven subscribers. You know who you are.

I could reflect on things I’ve improved on in all this time that I’ve made sweet, sweet love to my blog, but that’s pretty boring for you. Who really cares if I schedule out my Lollipop Tuesdays beforehand now or if I feel a lot more comfortable detaching myself from my writing journal and just posting whatever is on my mind? Who really wants to know if I have a graphic artist working on a super awesome header image for me or if I’m going to cover a Lollipop Tuesday event this month that involves a media pass and crossing several state borders?

No one, that’s who.

So instead of rolling out a big celebratory post where I chronicle my achievements, set out my future plans, and thank everyone for their part in this monstrosity, I suppose I’ll simply acknowledge the passing of the first half and march onward toward the next.

After all – I’m 180-something posts in and I still can’t manage to consistently post before 12:00pm on Saturdays.

Maybe I’ll manage that by the 3/4 celebration. ♣

Today’s RAK: A little research for a stressed friend.

Tags: 365 Project, blogging, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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Spontaneous Combustion: A New Social Policy

1 Jul

Okay. It’s time that I address a longstanding problem in society.

This might be awkward at first, but it’s the tough conversations that really inspire change in folks. So take your time, open your mind, and approach the following concept with patience and acceptance.

Repeating the last lines of a story in several different ways does not make it funnier.

I see people making this mistake all the time. It is painful for everyone around them and it personally makes me consider the repercussions of incurring severe head trauma on another human being. There is little in this world as thoroughly annoying and shut-your-face worthy as repeating the plot line of an unfunny story over and over in slightly different ways, expecting to milk a laugh.

You know what I’m talking about. Everyone knows someone like this. They tend to show up in higher numbers in offices, schools, and overeager parties. They tell you some amusing anecdote about their kid or their husband or some run-in they had with a lady at a grocery store. Or – worse – they tried to memorize a joke for the sake of socializing and tell it in public to try to make friends. And once you realize the story is over, you also realize they’re the only ones laughing while you’re left fixated on a piece of food stuck in their laughing, chattering teeth.

This is one of my toughest moments in my socially awkward anxiety.

I don’t like to fake laugh. To be honest, I’d prefer to never reveal that I’m amused by other people at all, for fear they mistake it for a desire to socialize. On occasion I will have to endure such a situation where a modest, seemingly authentic pity laugh is in order. I like to think of it as a touch-and-go operation. I’ll breeze past the part where you expect me to laugh in a story and we’ll move on to the next subject.

Touch and go.

When someone keeps repeating the last few lines of something over and over, getting louder and laughing harder at themselves each time – that’s when I can’t do the touch-and-go. Instead I have to stare at them and try to smile through my teeth without them reading it as a grimace. I’m waiting for the pain to be over. I’m waiting for that moment when they realize it isn’t funny or they laugh themselves to death or they spontaneously combust. I haven’t been lucky enough to have the latter happen yet. In fact, that’s a great rule. If you try to milk a laugh where a laugh is not due, you will burst forth in a fury of flames and hellfire.

So hear ye, hear ye. We’ve been warned on a massive and public scale. There will be absolutely no tolerance for milking laughs repeatedly and awkwardly where laughs are not due. Violators will be subject to corrective action to include but not be limited to spontaneous combustion.

thejackieblog.com: addressing social anxieties one violent death at a time. ♣

Image by "jervetson". Click to check out their Flickr Photostream.

Today’s RAK: Paid the parking garage ticket for two ladies.

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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You Could Be a Winner!

30 Jun

Sometimes when candy wrappers tell me I could be a winner, I believe them.

Of course, I believe other things, too. I believe soda caps, kiosks at malls, raffles for giveaways at local stores as well. It’s just that I seem to interact with candy wrappers most often.

Truth.

Come on – you do it too. You may not do it all the time, but you’ve sat there with nothing to do one time and asked your friend to type it in, or you’ve wandered online just to see what it’s about. Right? RIGHT? Did you maybe read this post because you thought the title would bring you the slight promise of reward? Because I have to admit that sometimes I sit around and wonder what it would be like to be the person who came home one day, opened up a bottle of soda and freaked the hell out because she just won $100,000. Or if I seriously got to be whisked off for a vacation someday. Or what about a new car that I only have to pay the taxes and associated fees on? That last one would be kind of a bummer at first and difficult to manage on such short notice, but still TOTALLY AWESOME.

I’m not as terrible as I used to be.

Companies putting a code on their products that force you to go to their websites to enter a code was a clever move. At first it made me really upset because I’m not going to go through all that nonsense. My suspension of disbelief lasts about 3 seconds. Unless I can lift up a flap, twist a cap, or look in a box that fast, the feeling that perhaps I have the golden ticket is far gone. But over time I grew to appreciate it because now I have a reason not to want to pursue the ridiculous notion that I could be in Hawaii next week because of a Butterfinger.

I’ve entered a few online codes in my day – you know…just to see – but clicking a mouse can’t replace that feeling of true hope I sometimes had right before I peeled open a candy wrapper to find out I was actually just a big fat loser.

It said try again but it didn’t really mean it. It knew I wouldn’t ever win.

It knew.

Maybe it will hit me when I don’t suspect it. Maybe something totally awesome and random is going to happen to me and it will be when I’m not peeking under wrappers and labels and lids. Or maybe hoping something will happen when I don’t suspect it is just as bad hoping for something in the first place.

I think I need to give it up. The golden ticket isn’t coming around any time soon – just a bunch of advertising and little “you lose” messages to make me feel badly about myself.

Thank goodness for Dove chocolates. ♣

Photo by "owlpacino". Click to check out their Flickr PhotoStream.

Today’s RAK: Working alongside a friend til their job is done and asking nothing in return.

Tags: 365 Project, food, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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Jackie and the Awesome, Terrific, Very Good, Super Great Day

29 Jun

I won yesterday. I won all day long. I won at everything.

There are days when I feel like I suck at the world. I suck at breathing, at talking, at thinking – all of it down the pooper. And on those days I think about what it might be like if it were reversed and instead of everything being awful, everything would be super awesome.

Yesterday, it happened.

I woke up a little late, but managed to get showered and decent in time to be at work two minutes early. I walked two miles. I got a lot done at work. My day blinked by so quickly that I actually stayed late because I didn’t really mind. When Dave picked me up from work, he asked me what I’d like to have for dinner and I realized that I’d gotten a lot done already this week and I might be able to enjoy myself for the evening.

All day I was in an awesome mood. Nothing was a big deal, nothing made me freak out, and nothing made me stressed. I handled my fashion-cape-wearing boss with ease and quickly tended to things that I could have let go until stress built around them. I made some good progress on several stressful projects and somehow things that were huge pains in my life worked themselves out on their own. And to top the day off, when I checked my email last night, I was greeted with a confirmation for my approved ‘Media Pass’ to a ridiculous event I was hoping to attend for free on the grounds that I’m covering it for my blog. Access granted – operation intense Lollipop Tuesday is in the works.

It. was. awesome.

And then I got to thinking about how I should probably soak this day up because I can’t even imagine the hell karma that will pour down on me tomorrow as a result of it. Or the week after. Or whenever. But somewhere, there’s quite a storm a’brewin.

And that’s totally fine. Because if super terrible days mean that sometimes I can have a super awesome day like this, I’m all in.

Bring on the storm. ♣

Today’s RAK: writing a letter to someone who could use receiving one.

Tags: 365 Project, Humor, life, musings, postaday2011

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An Evening (in Hell) with the Scrabble Club

28 Jun

I feel like I’ve had a lot of intense moments in my life to date. But none so far can match the incredibly intense moment when I told the head of the Scrabble club that I was going home early.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday folks.

This week, I found my adventure by flipping through the classifieds in my local paper. There, I found an ad for the city’s Scrabble Club chapter. I’m sorry – Competitive Scrabble Club Chapter.

That word makes all the difference in the world.

I was really hanging on tightly to the part in the newspaper ad that said “Beginners Welcome.” When the head of the local chapter (let’s call him Socrates) responded to my inquiry, he reported an average attendance of 15, with ages ranging from 13-85. I was pretty comfortable with the idea of playing anyone at the very bottom or the very top of that statistic, and since I’m an ex English major who does pretty well around the kitchen table and family, I thought I could at least avoid embarrassment.

I was sorely mistaken.

When I first arrived I was greeted by Socrates, who started started running down the official tournament rules. He handed me a cheat sheet with all the 3-letter and 2-letter words in the English language, common words to dump vowels with, and a list of common Bingos (when you clear your rack). He was wearing a Scrabble Champion t-shirt (legit, probably won in the 70’s).

After he had rattled off all the standard tournament rules, I was informed that as a special treat for being a first-time guest I could have an extra 5 minutes on my clock.

I’m sorry – what?

Apparently, competitive Scrabble is timed. You get 25 minutes altogether, which ticks down during your turn. When you’ve completed totaling your tiles, you announce your score for the round and hit the buzzer to switch to your opponent’s timer.

For someone who just learned what a Bingo was and didn’t even know ten of the 2-letter words, a timer is a frightening thing.

I got paired with a sweet, older woman named Connie. Connie was very pleasant to me, but she was also incredibly serious about the game of Scrabble. She had special professional grade tiles that could not be used for sneaky handed bag cheating.

That’s a term I made up for when someone dips in the bag and feels the letters to know which ones to pick.

She asked if I had my own board and I said I had the game at home. She asked if it was a turntable (no) and if I had the brown, wooden, cheater letters (yes). She was sorely disappointed. Connie had her own hand-sewn bag to slip over the board at the end of the game that poured the letters into it. The drawstring featured her name, spelled out in individually sewn buttons.

I did not.

I kept even with her score for about 6 rounds. After that, it was all downhill. By the time the game finished, she had doubled my score. Somewhere in between the lines were 4 triple-word scores that she managed to reach with my help, and several 40-point plays featuring only 2 letters from her rack.

I’ve never felt so stupid in all my life.

As it turns out, I don’t really know how to play Scrabble. I thought Scrabble was about making big words, connecting them to other words, and holding out for a Triple Word Score. What Scrabble is actually about is getting scores of 500 and over by wedging a word directly beside another word and matching up a series of 2-letter-words up and down the word you play. It’s about saving F’s and H’s and putting them in an unsuspecting corner that reaps enormous multi-word benefits.

At several points that evening, I looked at the board and not even knowing if it was safe to put an “s” on the end of something because I realized I have no idea what that word is.

So after Connie gave me a painful whoopin’, I decided I would head out. They had an odd number of people with me there anyway and I thought I was doing everyone a favor. After all, they have one of the top 500 ranked players in the nation in that room – I’m sure she wanted to get a bit of playing time in.

Socrates was very upset by the suggestion that I would head out. “Leaving early” they dubbed it. Apparently, they stick around for 3 games. Because “people who love Scrabble stay”. I felt incredibly pressured, but equally miserable and decided there was no way I was going to let a crotchety old Scrabble champion tell me what to do.

…So I kindly let him know that I wasn’t aware that I would be playing 3 games in a row and I thought I could use a good deal of studying.

He was very, very disappointed in me and asked me if I wanted to stay on the email distribution list. I said yes.

Why did I say yes? Why didn’t I just say I didn’t like it and they were really high-pressure for such relaxing-looking old folks. I had absolutely no intentions of returning to Socrates’ condo for another whoopin’. The experience was one of the most incredibly stressful ones of my entire life.

At least, until I write an email to Socrates saying I’m breaking up with the Scrabble Club.

Lord, give me strength. ♣

Today’s RAK: At the end of the day, held the elevator for a ridiculous amount of time so that a random woman could get on without waiting. She was my most appreciative RAK victim yet.