…with Gary Moss

I’m sitting at Bruegger’s Bagels writing my blog. An older 70ish man and woman walk in; there are only 2 people ahead of them in line (at other times the line stretches way out the door), The man is salivating for a good bagel; he stops and looks at the menus and signs high above and behind the cashier. The woman walks to the end of the short line; another patron enters the store and gets in line behind her. The service here is fast and efficient. The old man stands, still reading the menus. It is now the old lady’s turn to order. The old man isn’t ready. The patron behind the lady moves up in line because the lady is not ready to order. The old lady becomes huffy; she announces loudly, “We lost our place in line.” Now there isn’t a line at all. She walks up to the old man and signals that she is upset and wants to leave. I sit here wondering, ‘how could anyone want to hang around a person like that?’ (And yet, maybe she’d rather have a chocolate donut instead of a bagel.)

Ask some people, at random, if they ever heard about scrabble and many will think that it is nothing more that a children’s game, played with family at home on holidays or wiling away leisure time on vacation.

Those folks obviously don’t have a clue about my world of scrabble.

Scrabble is a bag of 100 tiles that can be aligned and realigned to form more than 155,000 different (legal) words; scrabble is a game that is every bit as challenging as chess and go and bridge. Every scrabble game is different; every opponent has a different skill set. Anyone can take up the game and move up in the ranks, if they apply themselves.

Many people look at the words played during a club scrabble session, and not knowing some of the words will say, “Those aren’t real words.” Those folks are the kind that believe that anything that they do not know is not real. How foolish! In the computer age, when we can search for endless information about the countless things that we do not know, how can so many people be so oppositional?

Some people, during their development and education, learned to see things from a particular perspective. Their learned behavior often inhibits those individuals from seeing outside their box. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that you are a ‘BAD SPELLER,’ you are a bad speller, as a result of your own belief. If you ‘BELIEVE’ that people of ‘YOUR RELIGION’ are superior to all others, you will treat others accordingly, as inferior. It is not good or bad; it just is that way.

I have met many people who could become great scrabble players. And I know that I cannot turn someone into a great and dedicated scrabble mavin. But, I can help any wannabe become better today than they were yesterday, and promise them that I can coach them to become even better tomorrow.

In spite of what we think and feel, we each have complete control over the way we perceive things. Even when we have teachers showing us ‘The Way’, we have the power to follow their teachings, or modify their messages, or we can tune them out completely. Why else did I flunk Biology I, at the hands of Mrs. Middleton, three times. I was more interested in running the show as a leader in the synagogue youth group; I let my public school studies slide. If Mrs. Middleton had captured my interest and turned my head to science, or if I chose science over socializing, who knows, I may have become the one to discover the cure for athlete’s foot or I might have mutated a gene to allow mankind to grow an additional prehensile digit, next to the thumb.

You can be and do almost anything you want to be or do.