I suck at games. I always have.
My sister started beating me at everything when she was 3 and I was 5. Not a good look for an older sister. I could not do Hüsker Dü. She blew me up in Battleship. Six-letter Boggle words filled her sheet while I struggled to see 3-letter ones. Parcheesi and Yahtzee and Checkers and Gin Rummy. It was all the same story. She beat me easily while I tore my hair and strained to see how she’d done it.
But the worst? The worst was Mastermind. My sister used the nefarious little colored pegs to make a hidden code and, more than a little bored, waited for me to figure it out. I almost never did.
Which brings me to Wordle.
When all my clever friends started posting their results – incomprehensible grids of white and green and yellow squares – I knew immediately that I hated it.
At first, I enjoyed being the only person I knew who wasn’t playing. “I have no idea what is going on,” I posted. And when someone kindly clued me in, I affably joked, “I will NEVER play that game.”
My husband Frank loves him a game. He loves card games and board games and cribbage and chess and anything else you can think of. And he is really really good at all of them.
So of course, he plays Wordle. And of course he crushes it. The first day, he got the word on his second guess.
Which drives me bananas. Just like my sister collecting all those Hüsker Dü chips without blinking an eye.
So I cheered him on and told him I would NEVER play that game.
While Frank was playing online Spades with his buddies (of course he plays online Spades with his buddies, what else would he do?), they got to talking about Wordle. One guy said how he and his wife played together every morning over coffee. Frank thought it sounded fun.
My crisp cheerful never-play-games coating cracked when he said it. The story in my head was loud
My brain doesn’t work like that. I can’t figure those things out. I’m stupid and no fun.
I sagged into the seat next to him. Frank looked at me. I said my head-story out loud. It felt terrible...and off. A big feeling and a big story around a little online word game.
I’m no stranger to out-of-proportion reactions. I know they signal something that needs attention and kindness. So I sat with myself for a bit. I put my hand on my heart and breathed. I talked to myself gently. I said all the things my Mastermind-traumatized self needed to hear. And something loosened, lightened, let go.
Oh honey. It feels scary to risk not doing this well. And you are not stupid. You are fun. You can play this game with Frank. It’s OK. It really is.
There was a time when a big out-sized reaction to something small freaked me out and humiliated me. These days, I see it as a signal, a sign post, something that needs my attention. It still doesn’t feel great but an out-of-proportion reaction is not the dumpster fire that it once was. It’s a chance to check in and take care of an injury.
After my meditation, Frank held out his phone and showed me the Wordle screen. “This is different than Mastermind,” he said. “It’s words. And you love words. We’ll do it together. It’ll be fun.”
And he’s right. It is.