#parenting

For the love of Wordle

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Every morning, there is a moment when I realize that’s it for sleep and I roll over and grab my phone. The new Wordle board opens and hope springs anew for that bull’s eye, hole in one, first try guess. I mean, it can’t be that difficult. How many five letter words can there be in the English language? 

As a logical person, I believe I have an edge in this game. As the letters become grayed out, logic intervenes. I am a whiz at analogies, earning me Mensa eligibility due to my high Miller Analogies score. Trust me, I’m no genius but I like games that require brain power, and for that reason, my son, Scott, pushed me into the world of Wordle. (He was also the person who alerted me to being “Mensa eligible.” I laughed in his face at the possibility.)

The text arrived back in early February. “Ma, have you tried Wordle yet? I think you’ll like it.” 

Scott and I have similar brains, quirks, and interests, which gives him insight into my basic likes and dislikes. I thought I meant it when I said, “Scott, I’m not getting involved in another game.”  

I’m already a slave to Words with Friends and Candy Crush Saga. My stats for those apps appall me. No human being should play enough words that they stretch 3 miles or 2,491 rounds of anything involving pretend candy. But I had no one to play Yahtzee or Boggle with. When Scott defected to Texas, my choices for playmates whittled down to my grandchildren and endless rounds of Go Fish and Old Maid using my original cartoony card decks from 1964. It’s bad enough I live next door to where I grew up but still using my nearly sixty-year-old toys? Talk about getting stuck!

I opened the Wordle app, just to see what all these posted Facebook scores were all about. I read the instructions and went at it. In four tries, I discerned the word of the day. I hit the share button and Scott’s name appeared at the top of my texting list. Adding the comment “Is this good?” I hit “SEND.” A few minutes later, Scott responded. “Well, you won but you really want to get three or less.” My golden bubble of success popped immediately. He has a knack for that. When your kid is so much like you, they know how to cut you to the quick. It’s a hazard of motherhood I tolerate for the sake of civilized communication.

The next morning, I opened the app and typed in “PARTY.” Three letters, one in the correct position, appeared. In three tries, all of the letters turned green. I shared the score. The kid’s response: “Good for you! It took me four today.” Vindicated, I played the next day and the next. Now on my fiftieth game, the preponderance of my scores hovers in the three-four word range, and I am proud to declare I have never lost yet. (I just knocked on wood. That was a jinx if I ever heard one.)

Wordle is a frustrating, intriguing, and challenging daily distraction. A salve for the soul weary from world events, it delays the inevitable dive into the Twitter rabbit hole for a few more minutes. It jars my brain into thinking mode. But what I love best about Wordle stems from its purpose as a conversation starter. From eighteen hundred miles away, my kid and I communicate, first about the scores of the day, and then about a million other things. I miss having him nearby but I appreciate Wordle for its contribution to family relations in a natural, unforced means of conveying news and affection.

Last week, he followed up his Wordle score text with  “Have you tried Quordle?” I shut him down immediately. “What the hell is that? No! I’m not getting involved in anything else!” I impressed myself with my forceful, adamant response. I’m sure he could hear my voice across the miles and he probably laughed. He knew it was a matter of time.

Yesterday, as I sat on the sofa with my nine-year-old grandson, Declan, we punched in letters and watched as they illuminated the Quordle screen. It was only a practice game but we shared the score with Uncle Scott. 

“Hey, it’s Dec, on Mami’s phone! Check this out!” 

“Well done, buddy!” 

I imagined Scott’s satisfaction, especially since he knew I was behind the Quordle success. With Dec as a decoy, I shamelessly demonstrated my lack of self-control when it comes to internet games and my commitment to the indoctrination of the next generation of people who play games, online and otherwise. 

I know the Wordle haters dread the daily Facebook scores friends share but the Italian mother in me appreciates Wordle for the unspoken service it performs keeping me in touch with my adult son, halfway across the country. It masks my cloying motherliness as it encourages our playful commentary and harmless competition. 

But I swear, that’s it. No more games. For now, at least.

Uncle Sam, Dad, and Me: A Taxing Relationship

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Tax time always reminds me of my father. When I was small, I watched as my father took on the task of “doing the taxes.” Every April 14th, he set himself up at the kitchen table with a pile of mishmashed documents, muttering swears under his breath as he scribbled, erased, and reworked the data.  Dad was the master of the loophole and fudging numbers, knowing exactly where to tweak a digit without fear of an audit. To his credit, he seldom got hauled in for an “accounting error.” Instead, he toyed with working for the Internal Revenue Service, going so far as to take the civil service test, pass it, interview, and ultimately decline the offer of employment. His work at the General Electric plant in Lynn, Massachusetts was far more lucrative than what the government paid, and since he worked the night shift, he could nap on the job. He knew he couldn’t snooze at his desk at the IRS, making his life as a blue-collared machinist preferable to a career dressed in a shirt and tie and sitting upright.

Dad’s professed acumen with a 1040 and its multiple schedules gave birth to a side gig. He did the taxes for most of the guys in “the shop,” my grandparents, and anyone who needed help navigating the convoluted forms. Again, he employed his skills–a little heavy on the charitable donations, a little less on the bank interest. It was the 60s, a simpler and less precise  time when the use of computers the size of an entire room had yet to manage the banking world. Paper, pen, adding machines, and old fashioned manual typewriters kept track of transactions. Dad easily snuck a few adjustments by the discerning eye of an auditor. He was clever, if not also a bit dishonest. I never questioned or doubted my father. To me, Dad’s shifty ways were normal.

Propping me on his knee, Dad showed me his calculations and how the numbers interacted to produce an amount of tax owed. I was probably only six-years-old the first time I flipped to the back of the IRS manual to find the chart, sliding my finger down the margin to my father’s income range, then moving to the right to the “Married Filing Jointly” column. Like magic, there was Dad’s tax liability. I remember giggling at this secret my father was letting me in on. For years to come, I sat at his side, learning to fill out the forms, curious about the process without ever knowing the life skill my father was teaching me. When we finished, he always gave me the extra, unused forms and I subjected more than a few of my dolls to my version of tax prep. Didn’t every kid do that?

This past Monday, I filed my taxes. It’s harder now to play the system, and being of a more honorable nature than Dad, I wouldn’t even try. Still, in the tradition of my father, I waited until the last minute to file and pay my bill. I heard my father’s voice clearly as I procrastinated:

 “Why the hell would you pay early if you owe them money? Keep the money in the bank until the very last minute and then write the check. Why give them use of your money when you could be making money on it yourself?”

Dad loved money: making it, saving it, investing it. He was shrewd and calculating. And maybe a little devious. 

In the 1990s, I assumed the responsibility for our family’s taxes–ours and my father’s. Dad sat beside me as Turbotax prompted me for the digits found in Box 1b and I typed the numbers on the computer keyboard as he read to me from his 1099’s–R, DIV, INT, OID. Dad watched in awe as the program whirred through the responses, giving us a real-time calculation at the top of the screen. I loved to hear him say, “Geeze, that’s amazing!” Dad loved technology but for him, this  bordered on miraculous.  In time, he just handed over his half-assed file of tax paperwork, leaving me to plow through his lousy recordkeeping system. Eventually, I just kept the books for him and me. As Dad passed the baton, he never doubted my abilities. He knew I was trained by the best, and now had a computer calculation to back me, in case I screwed up.

In a surprising shift, my father also had a slant on paying his due. I think about his words every year as I send off my small fortune in taxes owed to the IRS: 

“Never complain about paying your taxes. It means you have money to pay taxes on. Be grateful.”

And as much as it pains me to see my bank balance shrink every year, I know he was right. And for Dad’s tutelage and my good fortune, I am grateful.