The Games Clarks Play

A thousand years ago when my last name was Clark, like that of the Father Of My Children, he and I played a word game for hours on end while we traveled by train through Germany and Switzerland to our first ski vacation in 1972. That vacation has, actually, become family lore. I understand from Tyler that it has taken on a life of its own—two lives, actually, depending upon which parent tells the tale. But I digress.

This word game is played without the benefit of pencil and paper. Each player thinks of a three letter word but doesn't tell the other player. Let's say your word is "fig" and mine is "pea". I go first. My guess is "pie" and you answer 1. One letter in my guess is in your word. You guess "ask" and I answer 1. The order of the letters doesn't matter. Only the number of letters correctly guessed. The challenge is remembering what word I have chosen while keeping track of what letters I have guessed, both correctly and incorrectly of my opponent's word. I forget what happens if the word has double letters. That's always what makes the word harder. The games is made exponentially more difficult when there are more than two players.

My point was that we were able to pass countless hours, on that trip and many subsequent trips, playing that game. We were a game-playing family and I always loved that. I loved the Saturday nights when we would have people over for dinner and board games or card games, cut short only because we had to get up in the morning to get to church. Tyler has been gracious to begin playing games with me again since I moved up here, and it makes me so happy.

Wednesday afternoon I heard the guys in the next aisle of cubicles talking about home schooling. The guy I know the best, who used to sit next to me, said he was home schooled for a couple of years. I stopped by to chat for a moment before leaving for the day and told him my grandson, not yet seven, had been home schooled and thought alliteration was just the coolest thing. My friend said he thought alliteration was very cool, especially for naming kids. My friend's name is Brian Brotherton.

When I walked in the door at home, the first thing I did was tell Boston the alliteration story. He looked at me blankly. I said again, "His name is BRian BRotherton." He said, "Ohhh." And giggled uproariously.

This afternoon I glanced at my XMRadio display on my desk and noticed the piece that was playing was by Adolphe Adam. Aha. Alliterative composers. As I was driving home to Youngstown from Akron, I texted Tyler, driving toward me from D.C., that Boston's favorite composer was going to be Adolphe Adam. I didn't realize what I was starting. Bela Bartok. Edward Elgar. Howard Hanson. David Diamond. George Gershwin. William Walton. Modest Mussorgsky.

The texts flew back and forth. I was astonished at Tyler's command of the names of classical composers.

Until, that is, he confessed to scrolling through his iPod playlists to see the names of composers whose works he had stored.

I wonder what games normal people play?