What do you do when you pull the X Q Z from the Scrabble bag?

Plans shift. It's been said to "Expect the Unexpected." To me, this is an apparent paradox, because if you expect the unexpected, then isn't it then expected? Well, what I gather from such a proverb is this advice: be open to shifts. Anyone who knows me knows my middle name should be shift. I PUT ON THE TEMPORARY CAPS LOCK EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. and sometimes i never touch it. I live for the shift. I live in shift. But I'm not shifty - I am candid and frank. Just call me Candid Frank. Or I guess I'd be Candid Shift Frank, since Shift is my middle name.

... I digress - I was on my way to Chico, CA on Thursday to do some hiking, reading, writing, relaxing and catching up with my friend Malia. On my way, I gave her a call only to find she was in Sacramento with her friend from high school, Adelle. My route took me right through Sac, so I decided to take a pit stop. We ended up chatting on the back porch with wine and sunshine, going out for delicious deep dish pizza and playing a tenacious game of Scrabble before sleeps. Chico got put on hold.

I am sure anyone who finds interest in sitting around a square board made out of tan, salmon pink, baby blue and (the ultimate) red squares, placing a mixture of their 7 wooden squares in vertical or horizontal patterns, so as to maximize points, knows the importance of X Q & Z.

During this Sacramento game of Scrabble, I happened to pull all three of these letters throughout the game - two in the first scoop! And like any rusty scrabbler who hasn't practiced, played or read the dictionary lately, I whined and moaned that I wasn't getting the proper proportion of vowels to consonants. About 3/4's of the way through the game, I inquired about the score. Bookkeeper Malia informed me that I was in the lead- a hefty dozen points ahead of her (she grew up in Indiana... she's goood.) After the game was over, and I won, I thought about what it means to pull those three valuable yet vexatious letters.

It's really about luck of the draw in getting those letters. But I've seen people MacGyver their way to number one out of the scrabble pack with slim pickins of one-point letters (such persons go by the pseudonyms of 'Mom' and 'Maloeuia'). Life really is about taking what you are given and making the best out of it. When you reach into that Stygian Scrabble bag, you have no way of knowing what to expect. You, therefore, can truly expect the unexpected.

Although I did come out on top with the high-dollar letters I was given, it's not easy to place a Q without having a U.

Which reminds me of a poem I once read in a cartoon strip when I was little. I think it may be the only poem I've ever memorized. The cartoon was a little ant reading a poem about his favorite letter to a classroom full of other ants, who probably had other favorite letters. For instance, I found out last week that Rachel and I share the same favorite letter: g.

"If I could be a letter,
I would be a Q -
as letters go
it don't seem Q's
have all that much to do
Mostly they get used in words
for doctors and for ducks
(which may well be the only time
that Q's get any yucks.)

Q's are never all alone in anything they do
'cause everything you find a Q
it's followed by a U.

Privacy is not a thing
I've ever been too keen on.
I'd rather know
when I feel low
that I got U to lean on."

I don't know who wrote this brilliant masterpiece of a poem, but he obviously touched me. I'm in a lot of debt because of that ant's poem.

Anyway, do the best you can with whatever you grab outta' the Scrabble bag of life. Quit complaining about your vowel ratio.

Sidenote: all my hopes dreams and aspirations of my purpose in the Scrabble world were shattered that night when Adelle reminded me that I could never get a SCRABBLE with the word S-E-Q-U-O-I-A (7 letters and uses only ALL the vowels and an 'S'... only word lovers will really get why this would be so exciting for me) because Sequoia is a proper noun. No proper nouns allowed in Scrabble. How discriminatory. I am going to invent my own Scrabble game called Babble. The poets' version of Scrabble, where everything is allowed. All languages, slangs, nouns and names allowed. And maybe I won't use squares - I'll use triangles or something . . .

(One may notice how wonderfully fluid and easy to follow my brain has become since I stopped writing college essays. Right.)

Goodnight Oakland!