Five old ladies, playing cards,
canasta and pinochle and spades.
One time my aunt slipped a deck
of nude cards into the game,
made my Grandmother and the ladies
titter and feign shock and disgust.
Would've thought their lives
were prim and pristine,
but we all knew better.
But that was a sidebar.
Scrabble was the main battlefield,
played for money, nickel a point.
Could get really steep.
Each got her own dictionary,
so heavy my teen self
had to carry them
in and out of the cars
to set up the match.
Every week the same results,
Grandma, Aunt, neighbor Marge,
Mrs. Balk and her daughter, Anne,
only missed if truly ill.
The inevitable always occurred,
particularly when close at the end.
One lady would play a strange word
she found in her own dictionary.
Dispute! Everyone grabbed her resource.
"It ain't in mine, Rose."
"Nor in mine," yelled Anne.
"But it's in mine, “ cried Rose.
Back and forth.
Irreconcilable, the anger flared,
friendships and gossip on hold.
Some stomped out, even
left their tomes behind.
But an old friend would get sick,
someone they knew would die,
a pet would run away,
prices would rise,
and the old friends
would return to fight again.
"Za," my aunt would contend,
is not a word for pizza!"
"But it's in my book!”
said her mother.
A word among friends
can go either way.
Originally published in Off Course Magazine