Intrinsic Good in Practice

My annual turkey nap was cut short this year. “Meredith,” said my brother Stephen, “get up. We’re playing Bananagrams.”

[A brief and entirely unnecessary analysis of Stephen’s motives: my mother had told us that we were going to play a family game, and we were going to do it before he could go over to his girlfriend’s house. I hold no animosity towards him. Madison is wonderful.]

So we played Bananagrams. (def. Bananagrams – a game that’s like scrabble but doesn’t take as long). And it was good.

After Stephen left, I stayed at the kitchen table and fooled around with tiles. My dad came back and sat with me. And I’m not really sure how this happened, but we started playing “Hobbit Scrabble,” which wasn’t actually Scrabble. It was Banagrams, but it was better, because we were making up Hobbit words.

We read our creations, and defined them, and laughed. According to me, “Telpsy” is a feminine Hobbit name. My dad thinks it sounds like a Hobbit disease. He came up with “Bopsak” (a Hobbit’s backpack), “Pogwig” (a sort of mushroom that grows in the Shire), and my personal favorite, “Farquarzone.” That word doesn’t mean anything at all.

I’m thankful for my dad.