Friends in Word, Indeed! (My Scrabble Buddies)

Long before I stumbled into blogging, I had run into online scrabble. Or more precisely it crashed into me -- splitting me in two. One online (the virtual me), the other off (the real me).

For a while, I was in quarantine from my real life -- unable to give anything to it, wanting nothing from it. (I have since, auspiciously, regained my sense of balance.)

The Internet scrabble club gave me what I then called the "undiluted pleasure" of playing my favorite game with people of all colors, ages, nationalities, and other demographics.

As in the real world, I've met all kinds: the nice and not so.

Unlike in the real world, where you have to grin and bear with all types, you can shut off the absolutely un-nice in the scrabble club. By simply being put in your "no play" list, they can't play nor chat you even if they itched trying. They might as well be in limbo, as far as you know.

You of course "buddy" the very nice. "Buddying" means you'd know when they're online or off. You'd be alerted to their comings and goings. You make scrabble dates with them, play a dozen games with them until your back breaks and your eyes drop out of their sockets, observe them while they play another, kibitz them if neither of you mind.

Making scrabble friends online is as easy as boiling eggs in a pan. Many are drawn to my profile which I wrote so ingeniously it made me sound better than Pollyanna. So, players chat and buddy me. And I return the compliment.

Online friendships can be so fleeting, though.

For various reasons, you lose touch or lose interest. One may decide the other's not "that nice," or "that hot," or "that cool," after all or anymore. Or you playing style may not match -- you like playing an open board and she prefers it tight. Or he may like to tease and you don't. Or vice- versa.

The problem might lie with the time zone. He lives on the sunrise side of the mountain and you on its sunset slope, and you couldn't get synced for a game. Or she finds out how old you are and may get bored or intimidated playing a goldie, no matter how goodie.

Possibly, you outgrow him or he outgrows you -- in ratings. Or your games get skewed. And hey, I don't mind losing. But if someone beats me in all of five successive games -- that's no longer so sporting of anybuddy!!

Yup, most online friendships seem to have a shelf life. I've had as many as 40 on my budlist, and most have drifted away.

But there are exceptions.

In my buddy list, there are (at least) two that have come to stay ... and stay ... and stay ....

Let me tell you about them.

Marthalee Pietri aka Marthalee aka Pennielane aka Lucyndskys


A trueblue Beatle fan, as her aliases imply (all of them alluding to songs by the mopheads). An American from New York who married a Frenchman and has since settled in Britanny, a seaside haven northwest of France. Teaches English to French children and twice a year makes me hmmpphh and harumfff when she disappears from online to accompany a group of them to a study tour of England.

We call each other, in Marthalee's own words, our "first real scrabble friend and kindred spirit." Our friendship hits the three-year mark this August. It is one unblemished by kink nor snag. The only time I got upset with her was when she beat me four times in four games and seemed so unstricken by remorse. I don't know that I have ever upset her .. nor that I have won over her more than twice in a row.

She plays an open game and doesn't mind (very much) when I (more than) occasionally jam the board. She doesn't have qualms opening triples which puzzles this "kindred spirit" who'd sooner part with a limb than open a red spot. Notwithstanding our differences in playing style, we're so evenly matched we always play a very close game -- one where you have to do a little math towards the end to figure out how you'd win by one or two points. She never minds losing to me she says: "Better to lose points to a buddy than to any tomdickharrry."

How can anyone find fault with Marthalee! She never misses saying "nice one" when I bingo and "bravo" when I win. Always willing to adjourn when what she thinks is a preferred friend logs in. Generously passes every time I form a phony word when we play a challenge game.

She loves handmade paper products from Cagayan de Oro and freshwater pearls from Greenhills and doesn't complain if one or the other is all I send her for Christmas or her birthday. They are a limp return for all the chocolate truffles, pate, and rilettes and French cosmetics I have received from Britanny And yes -- eat your heart out, my fashionista friends -- I get to dangle a shoulder bag from Paris when I want to go tres chic.

Marthalee always threatens to come to the Philippines "next year" which never fails to give me the jitters for my topsyturvy, hot'n'dusty home is not (yet) ready to entertain a French-American lady who swims 24 laps each morning and jogs by the sea each afternoon. Once, I told her (joking, half-joking) I preferred I went to France instead. And she replied (serious): "Hmm, let me look at airline rates." Then I backtracked. Haha.

Manuel G. Reyes aka Peanoie aka Beatlefan
(shown here with his wife and daughters)

I found serendipity on a Saturday in June at a mall near my home. I had finished shopping; my kids were late picking me up -- so I went to a Net cafe to kill time.

I had just finished a scrabble game as "Pipinay" when who would click me for the next but someone named "Peanoie." As we began, one of us remarked our names were like-sounding. One question led to another and it turned out I was pi-PINAY to his PINOY-eh. I didn't get it at first: I was "duh (that was exactly his word)!

You know when you meet a fellow Pinoy in that international scrabble club of about 20,000 members and he/she turns out to be nice, funny, witty, belongs more or less (more of less, and less of more) to your fading generation, and shares many of your interests -- it's almost like winning the lotto.

Well, that was almost two years ago and the friendship has grown, stabilized.

As a migrant in Hawaii, he was hungry for news and stuff about his home country. Philipppine politics, the dwindling economy, the poor governance, the natural and man-made calamities, the desperation of the people.

He waxed romantic over Filipino music, literature, art -- even the Pinoy every-man. I could almost feel him flinch when I ranted we were a quarrelsome people who couldn't pull our act together. Told him it was easy for him to idealize the people, with his farsightedness and glasses soft-misted with nostalgia and homesickness.

But he kept posting me on proud Pinoy moments I took for granted -- the Pinoy beach boys in Hawaii clinching the junior baseball world championship, Manny Pacquiao winning his umpteenth fight, a team of pinay volleybelles making a good showing. He reminisced stories redolent of the Filipino's good humor, endurance, hospitality, and grace under pressure and poverty. He reminded me of the boundlessness of hope, the pride in great Filpinos like Ninoy, Ricarte, Sionil-Jose.

I was abashed for giving up on my own people.

So, it must be true, I told myself -- that when you go away from someone or someplace, you get to know it better.

Because of him, I read or reread Bienvenido Santos, F. Sionil Jose, N.V.M. Gonzalez and Nick Joaquin. I began to listen with TLC to Constancio de Guzman, Nick Abelardo, Levi Celerio.

He avidly chewed old fat with me -- Tia Dely, Student Canteen, Ang Panday and his Susana, Elvis and the Beatles, Nardong Putik . He has his roots in Cavite but he was familiar with some of mine -- Gagalangin, Torres High, UST.

He self-deprecates and I wonder why. He is as witty as I can never be. I claim to write but his English is more impeccable than mine. And yes, he beats me more than I do him.

(And ... he sends me macadamias and I send him Philippine music and literature.)

Notes:
Last November, we had an offline scrabble party with Peanoie and other Pinoy scrabble players. Marthalee sent pate -- which unfortunately came late for the event.)

Topmost photo: courtesy of Stockxpert.

Want to play scrabble online? Log on to: http://www.isc.ro. But just a word of warning: it IS addictive.

Anna-Come-Lately (My Secret Life as Scrabble Addict)

I have always been a late bloomer and adopter.

I almost flunked kindergarten, was the perennial "it" in tumbang preso and touch-ball games; didn't go out unchaperoned until the eve of my wedding; didn't learn a sport until I was 40; didn't learn to bike, drive, swim, dance, sing .. period.

I didn't begin to wear the miniskirt until it was on the way out. I never even dared put on the hot pants. I was a late adopter of the shoulder pads -- am still wearing a pair now and have vowed to wear them till death do us part.

When I meet friends of my youth, they still manage to recognize me -- thanks to a hairstyle that I have stuck with through thick and thinning hair.

I caught up with the bus of IT just in the nick of time, but not until my heart fairly burst with huffing. I was a recalcitrant who refused to touch the computer with a ten-foot pole. A straggler who wouldn't surrender her BIC ballpens and yellow lined pads until she was threatened with "touch or go." As I didn't want to go, I touched, nay, embraced the technology. How was I to know I would fall in love with it? I now have a permanent love affair with Word, Excel, and Publisher. Incredibly, I had a fling with FrontPage when my director bullied me into updating our official webpage.

They say that life begins at 40. But true to form, mine began much much later. My online life, that is.

I was born the day I stumbled on an online game.

Now, there are games and games ... and there is internet scrabble.

Imagine yourself before your PC, playing your favorite word game with a live opponent miles away. As you wait for her/him to form a word, you chat: "hi," "good luck," "where are you from," what time is it where you are?" You might be playing with an American first. Next, a Canadian, an Indian, a Singaporean, a Thai, a Briton. Or most delightful of all, a fellow Pinoy, who might be living just off the campus where you work or as far away as Oregon or Hawaii.

Pinoys are easy to spot. They like to use give-away names. I clicked Taray, Manlalaban, Dagohoy, Kurdapia, Bongga, and Tubongph because I could giddily say "kumusta" at the start of the game and "ang galing" when they "bingo" -- which is scrabble jargon for when one uses all seven letters in the rack in a single move. Those who live far away would eagerly ask about the weather in Manila, the level of cheating in the last elections, the casualty count in yet another supertyphoon. Others would turn out, delightfully, to be Philippine-based Filipinos who would suddenly drop by.

As in real life, you meet all kinds. You tell them you are from the Philippines and the reactions are mixed -- from rave (wow! cool!) to rant (how did someone from the third world learn to play English scrabble?). There are those who play quietly all the way and those who would divert you from taking your turn by non-stop chatter. You meet players who would generously pass when you accidentally misplayed your turn, and those who jam the board to block every move, playing as though winning were a matter of life and limb.

The nice thing about the site is you can "buddy" the very nice and "no-play" the absolutely un-nice. You can see when a buddy enters and leaves the site, play and chat him, even observe and kibitz him when he is playing with another. As for those whom you have no-played, as far as you're concerned, they might as well be in limbo.

When you make a new buddy in the site, you begin to paint a portrait in your mind. You start with a silhouette seated before a PC. Then you add brushstroke after brushstroke -- man, woman or androgyne; young, old or middling; white, black or in between; plump, lean or just so. The more intricate strokes are for drawing the inner person -- family man or free spirit; happy or brooding; friendly or taciturn; straight-talking, subtle, or funny. So the portrait grows, but is never finished. You add, delete, refine. The wonderful thing is, unless you meet your buddies face to face -- which is unlikely -- they can be (more or less) what you imagine them to be.

You don't get too attached to a portrait you've made or you're a candidate for heartbreak. Be ready to junk a portrait because, let's face it, online friendships are so ad hoc. But you learn not to mind, because out there in the online world are thousands -- nameless, faceless, waiting to be clicked on and played with and made a portrait of. And let's put it this way -- what if your online buddy just collapses and dies -- and he will do it offline of course. Will anyone bother to inform you about it? Sorry, bud, online friends are in the category of illegitimate children.

We scrabblers in the internet -- we have affinity with each other. We talk about our neglected families, call our spouses scrabble widows/widowers, our children scrabble orphans. We talk about our family threatening to send us to Rehab. We discuss about organizing Scrabblers Anonymous -- similar to AA -- and worry there would be no one to attend the meetings because everyone would be -- where else? -- online!

What is in a computer monitor that makes you tell a stranger deep dark secrets you wouldn't tell your best friend? Someone told me she was gay and that only I and the closet knew. Another confided about having a terminal illness and a year to live. Yet another talked of having the most awesome telephone sex the night before.

And you know what, dreaded retirement suddenly seems tolerable.

Until then, excuse me, while I log on.