BANANAGRAMS

My brother often teases me by saying, "Well Erin, I don't really know what I can say around you now, b/c it might shamelessly end up in your blog." Since my brother is one of my favorite people, I feel I must now divulge a hidden quirk of mine so as to show in reality, we're all a little bizarre.

Bananagrams. This is a game. If I were an intelligent woman, I would set "Bananagrams" as a hyperlink to Amazon.com-- I'm not that clever. So look it up.

If you're too lazy to look it up, allow me to explain. It's like scrabble, w/o a board. You build your on word puzzle and you work independently of the other players. Whomever has a complete puzzle when all the letters are out of the middle wins. There is no timing, or skill level required. You just need to know how to spell and form words. Any age can play it.

I must pay homage to the woman who introduced me to this game-- Judy. Since the introduction of this game in the summer of 2006, I have since purchased numerous games and given them to friends. It's gone to the beach, to church, a x-mas eve celebration, a bar, and to friends houses.

You know you're truly an expert if you use 2 hands to gather letters and form words- It's harder than it sounds.

I'm an expert.

Now, here's the part about my quirk... When you're suddenly quizzed on your ability to form words, you instantly realize you don't have a whole lot of reserves in your vocabulary for words that have a "j" in it. How about "wh" or "tw" and "sw" or of course, the cursed "Q." Since I am ridiculously stubborn, when I see a weakness in my own intellectual ability, it becomes all- consuming. I would go to bed, and since we all know I don't sleep, I would lie awake sounding out words w/ various letter combinations. Now granted, I didn't deprive myself of sleep or lose my ability to function, but I saw this as a challenge, and I became mildly obsessed. I even started playing by myself. I wanted to see how long it would take me to fill the board. It took me 49 minutes the first time, and now I've gotten down to 35. Get the game-- you'll know what I mean once you play. AND for those of you who read this who have played, back me up here. ;-)