Surprise butt-text!

I was talking to my mum on the phone the other day, catching up on the health matters of various family members. It was entirely inappropriate, then, to hear my sister in the background suddenly hooting with laughter. Bear in mind that I didn't even know she was there up until that point, either.

It turned out that my sister had received a random text message from a friend. A very bored friend.

To be honest, if I got that text, this would have been a little more like my reaction:

Love over Scrabble.

As a family, we have always liked word games, Scrabble in particular. Of course, there have always been personal foibles, and I don't expect that will change. Dad, in particular, used to make random guesses at word spellings; in case you couldn't tell, he was more of a numbers man. Many times, he would play a word and there would be a chorus of  "what the hell's that?", only for us to find out he was going for some semi-phonetic version of a common word. In fact, it got to the point when "Bagsy* coming last!" became his opening gambit.

He wasn't that bad a player though. As he always liked to put it, he was often runner-up. Pity there was usually only two of them playing.

On one occasion, a family game, it was my sister who was failing and trailing. In fact, by the end of the game, she had only managed 98 points. To put that into perspective, anything below 150 in a four-player game is, for us, a bad result. Ever the dutiful father, Dad decided to console his stricken daughter.

*'Dibs' for those more used to USA English

No pros, but plenty of cons

Back to my family and yet another game of Scrabble. Two games, actually. You'd think we have nothing better to do, wouldn't you? With five people around the table, one person had to sit on the sidelines, and I volunteered with alacrity. Also with appropriate alacrity, I dashed off for my notebook and pen.
Oh come on - you don't think I was giving up a four-way Scrabble game out of the goodness of my heart, do you? Especially considering when two of the four are Julie and my father. OK, so my (currently) reticent mother and my sister were there too, but we all know where the fun lies, don't we?
Actually, in this case, no. Dad and Julie were bucking the trends and setting standards by winning a game each, an unusual event in itself, as they are usually proud of their ability, if that's the right word, to come last in a game. So much so that Dad appears to have himself a catchphrase, which he gleefully calls out as we're setting up the game.

"Bagsy coming last!"*

In one sense, I suppose, it's almost a mantra, to ward off any bad luck (ok, sour grapes, possibly) in case he does lose. Admittedly, if it's just him vs Mum, then the odds are that he'll lose.
Like I said though, He shared wins with Julie over a pair of games, something Mum took badly, sulking over a spectacularly awful set of letters. My sister, on the other hand - despite a couple of brief snits here and there - took their wins with a certain awkward grace...

We all looked at Dad at that point. It was so much like something he would have said it was uncanny. It was almost as if he'd scripted that line. Only the fact he was creasing up proved it was the first time he'd heard that line. Oh, well. At least I got one final Gem out of the game...

...or did I...?

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*In the USA and other countries, this equates to calling 'dibs'.