Bluffing

In university, there was a course in...I don't remember - psychology? organizational behaviour? that talked about people who took risks. It's the very foolish and disorganized or the very secure and organized people who subject themselves to the greatest risks in life.

That risk-taking personality translates into everyday behaviour too. Such as when you play a game of Scrabble. In the game, one of the ways to score higher is to have memorized all the two- and three-letter words so that when you place your word beside another word, you create two or more small words where the letters touch. These are the words that can rack up points.

When The Boy and I play, we push the limit all the time. We don't really know what two- and three-letter words are real and which are made up. When we bluff, we do a song and dance about what the word means, then say to the other, Are you challenging it? Then the other calculates whether he or she would get ahead with a challenge. It means we let a lot of garbage words go if by challenging, we don't get ahead. But when there is a third person in the game, the dynamics change.

Last night, my first bingo was scourged. Immediately, I came up with a second attempt at bingo with aground. Only, the a was attached to es, which formed the word aes. Is aes a word? I remember ae on a list of acceptable words. Surely you can pluralize it. The boy saw no advantage in challenging me for it. But not so Bril (my brother-in-law). He wouldn't have gained an advantage in challenging me either, but he did it for the principle of it. Imagine, the principle of it.

Wouldn't you know, aes is not a word in the Scrabble dictionary! You cannot pluralize ae because ae is an adjective meaning singular. Poppycock either way. It's dumb that it's actually a word in the Scrabble dictionary. I can't use ae in a sentence and the dictionary doesn't expand on its use. It's dumber that I didn't get my play. But it sure was fun trying to score a second bingo to rack up 80 points.

Oh I could have gone for a sure thing and used another word for fewer points. But what's the fun of that? The Boy understands. I wonder if we are foolish or secure. Maybe a bit of both. I see the same reckless streak in us. But only when the environment is fairly safe already.