Popcorn anyone?

ery now and then my dad tells us an old family story and I just can't help but laugh, especially when he leaves out key details until prompted (often after we have time to really think about it and go, "hey...").

Back when my dad's brother was home for college one break, my grandmother was hosting her ladies for tea and cards as she often did. My grandmother loved to play cards. She once told me, "honey, you're no longer my granddaughter we play cards." We called her the ultimate card shark. Canasta was a serious business. So it didn't help matters when my grandmother asked my uncle to dish up the popcorn in the kitchen and take it out to all the ladies. Unbeknowest to my grandmother, my uncle packed up the popcorn in little individual serving bags. Turns out the bags, however, were from (clean - not used) sanitary napkins that you used to get in hotels. My uncle had accumulated an entire stack and saved these for just a "special purpose." Needless to say, this didn't go over well with my grandmother.

It took ES and I about a day to ask my dad how my uncle got all those, seeing he was in college and wasn't doing a lot of traveling.

"Oh," my dad says. "I got them for him." Ah...the story unfolds. Although my uncle was the family comedian, my father was more of a behind the scenes making it funny.

It was nice to laugh with him this weekend.

We played Scrabble as usual. Although this time it was "Super Scrabble." The ultimate in Scrabble with quadruple letter and word scores and 2x the number of tiles and double the board size. Games take longer and points are much higher (500+), but we had a great time. And as always, my mom tries to play fake words. We used to think she just didn't know better, but now we're all getting wise. And the familiar "oh darn" when she draws her tiles. Everytime. Makes me smile just thinking about the silliness of the game.

And we are challengers. Just the inkingly of someone questioning a word and out comes the familiar "are you challenging me?" said with a defensive posture almost. We almost never challenge my father, plays words we haven't ever heard of, but they are almost always for real.

"No - just checking" is our usual reply.

Long live the good ole' Scrabble game. The ultimate blood sport in our family.