Words with Cupcake

For those of you that have an iPhone, I'm sure you are familiar with Words with Friends and the large amounts of time that can be wasted on the game. For those of you who aren't, its an app that allows you to play Scrabble against someone you know or a random opponent. As a rule, I don't like board games, but Word with Friends I like because I can play as often or as little as I want and on my own terms. Plus, you can send and receive messages to/from your opponent and it tallies up the score for you.... probably because we are tired from all that spellin'.

About 2 months ago, Brock and I downloaded the app on our phones. We were able to set it up so we could access the same game on both of our phones and we figured that 2 brains was better than 1.....big mistake. We quickly started playing, mostly with random opponents and one with the math teacher at his school. We were getting beat on a consistent basis. The matches weren't even close. As we would celebrate an 18 point word, our opponents would quickly respond with 76 point word. This happened game after game after game. The worst was the math teacher who Brock had to face everyday and endure his taunts. We would request new opponents and each one was smarter than the next, with user names like "wordphd", "imnmensa", and "brainiac" our success rate on Words with Friends was embarrassing. Over time, we got used to losing and dare I say comfortable with our inability to take 7 letters and turn them into a word worth more than 8 points. It had become a sad existence. Finally, in one last effort to save our dignity we requested another opponent, and that's when God smiled on us and we were matched up against "cupcake".

As we began our match against Cupcake, we discovered we had finally meet our intellectual equal. We played "rat" and Cupcake responded with "am", we added an "s" to "rat" and Cupcake fired back with "sat".  Suddenly, the pressure of coming up with 80 point words was off. Granted, the games took weeks as neither one of played a word with more than 4 letters. Brock and I were feeling good and our confidence started to blossom. As we celebrated our new found intelligence, our thoughts turned to Cupcake. Who was Cupcake?  First off,  we assumed Cupcake was female. Based on her level of vocabulary, we figured Cupcake to be in the 3rd or 4th grade. Then her name conjured up all sorts of images. We imagined her to wear mostly pink, be a huge Hello Kitty fan, have her phone case bedazzled and never miss an episode of Glee.  Cupcake probably lives in a Chicago suburb, does gymnastics in the summer and ice skates in the winter,  and lists cotton candy as one of her favorite foods. Regardless, Cupcake proved to be a worthy opponent for our skill level and we showed no mercy. One particular game, Cupcake was making an unprecedented comeback. Trailing  by 175 points she was able to close the gap to 40. Then, in a move that can only be described as a miracle, we played the word "jack" and with triple letters and triple word, "jack" was worth 121 points, the most we had ever played. We high fived, we laughed, we were euphoric, we were lost in ourselves........and then the game signaled that there was a message from Cupcake. She had never messaged us and we had never messaged her....but now, Cupcake had something to say.  Her message was simple and direct and went like this:

"WTF??"

Well said, Cupcake, well said.