A Creature of Habit

by Hap Rocketto

To say that my wife Margaret is, what we call in the education dodge, ‘concrete sequential’ is an understatement. She is a creature of strong habit and it works for her. If she didn’t mind being hot and sweaty and uncomfortable she would be an excellent prone shooter because she is so consistent in her life. One of her great pleasures, outside of our daughters and couponing, is playing Scrabble. She loves the word game developed by Alfred Butts, who, as an out of work architect during the Great Depression, developed it to flesh out his meager to non-existent income.

Each Friday night we sit as a family and habitually inevitably eat pizza or fish and chips. As soon as decent after supper my wife leaves me with the daughters as she rushes of to her Aunt Celina’s house. I either transport the two kids about to events in their increasingly broadening social universe or let them recover from a hard school week in front of the TV. My wife, on the other hand, closets herself with Aunt Celina and Cousin Rose Marie and they duel over the Scrabble board. They tally wins and losses and even have rules and regulations for the collection of “dues,” which they pool for a fling at the local casino at the end of the Scrabble season.

On the other end of the familial spectrum is my brother Steve. Random abstract is how the education community would charitably classify him. My brother believes firmly in the bumper sticker aphorism, “So many books-So little time.” His basement contains hundreds of linear feet of shelves, bulging with books covering a wide variety of subjects. In this are my wife and brother are the much same, she is Catholic and he is catholic.

Knowing Margaret’s passion for Scrabble, Steve gave to her a book on the subject, which he had surreptitiously read before he gave it to her. I know this to be a fact as I managed to sneak it away from Margaret before she read it and noted several tiny crumbs of food caught between the pages, which I cleaned out. My brother, a bachelor of long standing, reads as he eats. He is not being impolite, after all he is alone. Actually he is being socially correct as he enjoys stimulating conversation over dinner and isn’t reading a book much the same as carrying on a conversation with the author?

Never-the-less Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis, is an intriguing look into the people who populate the rarefied atmosphere of world class Scrabble competition. Fatsis was familiar to me through his spots on the Public Radio program All Things Considered and his book was no disappointment. While reading I noted that there seems to be a vague similarity between the characters who sit about a Scrabble board and those that shoot. Both are highly cerebral games and there is much expenditure with little payoff.

Reading the book Fatsis, a Brooklyn boy like me, introduced me to a fascinating cast of characters who all seemed to have tunnel vision, an inability to stay gainfully employed, and were deliciously eccentric. Fatsis was trying to learn how to play Scrabble at the highest level and hung with those that might teach him.

His coterie of junk food eating and hygiene challenged Scrabble masters seemed a world away from the rather conservative and straight laced folks found in the shooting community despite the basic similarity already noted. It wasn’t until Fatis asked Joe Edley, who is to Scrabble as Foth or Dubis is to rifle shooting, what is needed to be a champion.

According to him all you needed to do to become a champion was:

“1. The ability to DESIRE to be the best. Or, DESIRE to WIN whatever championship is important to you.

2. Unshakable honesty within oneself to answer the questions about your own strengths and weaknesses.

3. Controlling your breath.

4. Finding a way to control your emotional states.

5. The X Factor. I don’t know what it is. It’s just the seemingly extraordinary state that any given champion has during the winning tournament.”

Edley’s requirements read like an Army Marksmanship Unit’s Manual’s section on traits of a winner. Particularly number five, the X Factor. Nothing pleases shooters more than Xs.

I guess the only real differences, other than dress, nutrition, bank balance and hygiene, between the winner at the Scrabble table and the winner at the rifle range is that the Scrabble player is probably a better speller.