Monday, January 23, 2012

My Mom's (Words with) Friends

My mom is a teacher. Not a regular teacher. She specializes in teaching children who are severely disabled, often born both blind and death, with additional development issues such as autism, cerebral palsy. She is recognized as one of our nations best teachers with an award from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and a week ago a congressman visited her.

When she's not teaching blind children how to read and deaf children how to make music, she plays Words With Friends on her iPhone. I've never played before but I hear it's like Scrabble except you can try lots of different words and have many games going on at once.

At a recent family gathering she hosted, I found her multi-tasking. She mentioned to the group that she was playing Words With Friends with her 9-year old niece in Florida. I asked her who else she played with, why and how. Her name is MoragaMama, after the town she lives in. You can change your name if you like, though, she said. A friend of hers just moved to Mexico and changed his Words With Friends name to HappyNewHere. Her niece is playing on her dad's account, BillWhite299.

"There are some people I play with who I don't know, just random strangers...." There is a lull in the room and we all start thinking about something else. Before anyone speaks, she says, sheepishly "like theBigDickBanditt."

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