Playing games with the score

Uncle Joe arrived promptly at 7:30. The board was set up on the kitchen table. I liked to watch my uncle focus on a play. With his chin in the palm of one hand and his brow furrowed, he'd plot his move – usually finding a spot where two added letters created three new words and no place on which to build. He did that again tonight, and I snarled, only semiseriously.

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The clock hands moved along. "That's very good, Elaine," he said each time I made a reasonably intelligent move – no doubt one I'd learned by watching him. I glowed with pride.

Joe usually wins – sort of. "You know," he says, "this was really your game." He'll claim he had all the S's, or the Q and the Z – an unfair advantage. "You had to play a less-than-adequate hand, and look how well you did!" he'll add, "You had the greater challenge, so I think you won."

I grin, anticipating his next line. "Sometimes you can win even without the points!" he says. I love this side of Uncle Joe. He's a gentleman, win or lose.

Tonight, for our between-game snack, I bring out a bowl of chilled seedless grapes and a plate of bean dip with crackers. Now we discuss the day's news and other events of our week. When the second game begins, I'm ever hopeful that I will win – a real win, with points.

"Honey," I said to my husband later. "We should play games. It would give us a chance to do something interactive."

"We interact," he said with a smile. "What about going out to dinner? What about movies?"

"That's not interactive," I said. "I want to do something where we're talking and kidding around. Let's play Trivial Pursuit one night. We haven't played in ages."

The following Friday night, with no televised basketball games, I made my move. "How about that game of Trivial Pursuit?" I asked.

Bernie agreed, and I ran upstairs to retrieve the game. In a matter of minutes I'd set up the board on the kitchen table. We selected our colored discs and threw the dice. Bernie would go first.

"What category?" I asked.

"I'll take 'Sports,' " he said.

I pulled a card. "What speed skater won five gold medals at the 1980 winter Olympics?" He'll never get that, I thought smugly.

"Hmm, let's go with Eric Heiden," he said – correctly.

On his next spin, he landed on a geography question. A former history major, he loves geography.

"What's the capital of Chile?" I asked, ruing the injustice of his getting an easy question. I knew that one.

"Santiago," he said instantly.

It took three more rolls of the dice before I got a turn. He answered questions on a film from the 1950s, the currency of Monaco, and the value of 100 kopecks in rubles. I marveled at his store of trivia.

On my first turn, I landed on green – science. As an English major, I sensed a cloud of doom on my horizon.

"Where is human skin the thickest?"

Thickest? I mused. Derrière? Calf? Tummy?

"I say the thigh."

"Nope. It's the back," he said.

The outcome of the game was clear. I not only would lose, I'd lose big. I knew literature and history, less of geography and entertainment, little of science or sports. My pride shriveled.

"Good game, honey," I said. "You really know a lot of stuff." He gave me a hug.

"You won with points," I continued, "and I didn't win with no points."

"Say what?" He looked at me, puzzled.

There was no point trying to explain. I needed an uncle with whom I could be a silly little girl again, who handed me an unconditional triumph – with or without the points. Tuesday night I'd be on top again. I'd bake a chocolate torte for the between-game snack, in anticipation of my victory.