The Laissez-Faire Scrabble Cure

...Continued from yesterday:

Saturday afternoon after my mom had fixed Tom and I lunch,

...and, at her insistence, washed the dishes by herself,

…while we youngsters rested up from our rigorous morning of sitting around, she mentioned that she and one of her two household-helpers (neither of whom were there because Tom and I were supposedly taking their place during our visit even though we’d scarcely lifted a finger thus far) enjoyed playing a couple of rounds of Scrabble every day after lunch.  
    I therefore proposed that a couple of rounds of Scrabble would be the very thing, even though I don’t think I’d ever actually played before.  I’ve never been much of a game-  or card-player except out of necessity, such as back when I was in high school during the era when it was okay to go out to the movies with your girl friends on Friday night but not Saturday night, as, according to the strict social mores of the day, Saturday night was reserved for couples.  Thus we dateless girls were constrained to spending our Saturday nights at each others’ houses listening to records, watching  “Saturday Night At The Movies”  on TV or playing cards or board games.    
     And so, though I spent manys the Saturday night ensconced in games of 500 Rummy, Monopoly, Clue and Parchesi,  Scrabble for some reason was never among our games of choice.
     But, as my mom enjoyed playing Scrabble, I was willing to give it a try, and Tom said he’d join us, too.

     My mom owns a lovely scrabble board with wheels on the bottom so it can tilt and spin around from player to player.

She also keeps on hand  a well-worn Scrabble dictionary which I, for one, made frequent use of,

...and a little chart listing the letter combinations permissible in cases where unrelated letters might touch  in passing.

      My mom explained the gist of the game to Tom and me and we spent the afternoon cogitating over word combinations.

...and imploring the fates for some decent letters.

    

   

       I later learned from my son Tommy, himself a Scrabble aficionado, that, probably for Tom's and my sake, beginners that we were, my mom had allowed us a pretty soft version of the rules:  apparently according to the real rules of Scrabble the dictionary may be used only to settle a disputed spelling and not to look for words, players aren't supposed to help each other out, score is kept and at the end someone wins. 
      But never mind,  after several rounds of  laissez-faire Scrabble I felt so relaxed and stress-free that I had to take a nap, during which I fell into a deep, restful, refreshing sleep.
     I think I might have just  discovered a cure for my insomnia.