Are You Smarter than a Seven-Year-Old?
My son beat me at Scrabble tonight. By 21 points.
Yeah.
Now, I’m a fairly decent Scrabble player. I have an ongoing competition with my agent on Facebook (so far I’m up on him 9 games to 5). We’ve discussed how 
Scrabble, unlike chess, has a measure of luck to it – it all depends on the draw. So, as Jacob and I were playing tonight, he’s building words like QUITS, FIVES, and FLEX on double word scores, WELT on a triple word score, and I have AIUIOOA and RRRIIIU on my rack.
I’m not making excuses; that’s how the game is played and I would never take the win away from him. Meanwhile, he’s saying things like, “I need a beating Mom snack,” and “I can’t believe a seven-year-old is beating the Scrabble champion,” and singing, “I am winning, yes, I am,” to the tune of Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dance #5. Then, when the game was over, he called his grandfather and told him, “I just humiliated Mom.”
The highlight of winning? This blog entry. He’s thrilled that I’m telling the world of his victory. “This is the first time I beat you at anything,” he said. He’s forgetting the time he was five and put me into checkmate while I was on the telephone, not paying attention to the game, obviously.
No excuses.
There’s NO WAY I’d play Scrabble against Jacob. First of all, I can’t spell, and secondly, oh, the humiliation of being beaten by a 7 year old! He’s obviously gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this, as you can see by his big smile.
So ,not only is he an awesome ball player, but he has some pretty good brains to fall back should a career in baseball not pan out. Congratulations to Jacob.
Yeah, he wants to play me again tonight, and I told him he’s not going to beat me again until he’s 27!
Go, Jacob Go! Beautiful bird garden also!!
Thanks, Carolyn!!! I’ll tell Jacob. He’s so proud of himself, as if you couldn’t tell from the photo
Now, once this heat breaks, we’ll be able to work more on the bird garden (though it won’t be finished until after I return from South Dakota)…
Way to go Jacob!!! That is great – Congratulations. I am so proud of you. You are an amazing kid.
Hi Christa & Jacob,
First time visiting your blog and first comment on one-ever! Great Job Jacob! We love scrabble too! You’ll have to come beat me sometime!
Krista
Thanks for stopping by, Krista! You see that huge grin on Jacob’s face? He certainly enjoyed beating his mom.
Don’t swell the kid’s head any more, Aunt Laura!!!
This made me smile… I had dessert tonight with Bill Jensen, and he mentioned this fantastic author he was playing scrabble with on Facebook. So I looked you up… and here you are writing about
Scrabble, (and Bill too!)… and this brilliant son who takes after his mama.
May all the right words keep coming…
I look forward to reading you…
Every blessing…
All’s grace,
Ann Voskamp