Clarification and Further Characters

Just to be clear, I meant Crusty Crew to refer collectively to all the people who play at Panera bread. It was merely coincidence that the first three I described (the Silver Squadron) happens to be umm, well-aged. I am now afraid that Kathy will use her theoretical spy skills to eliminate me . Perhaps more worrisome, even if Jo Ann only knows every other person in existence, that still means she knows half of all the assassins, half of all the mercenaries, half of all the people who give really bad wedgies, etc... Maybe I will be lucky though, and receive no more than a withering glare and another finger from Louise.

Anyways, there are many more scrabble monkeys in this menagerie to cover. The leader of our tribe is Peggy. She resurrected the club from the ashes of a previous incarnation and grew the membership to its current healthy level. This perilous journey journey was filled with enough intrigue and pitfalls that I will give it a separate post some time I am feeling especially brave and/or foolhardy( seriously, something weird went down in the shady, scrabbly past and now some people won't talk to others and no one ever sits in a suspicious booth in the corner that smells faintly of brimstone). Whatever happened, Peggy keeps the club healthy and growing now and handles the logistics of having enough equipment, keeping people informed about upcoming events, and buying enough food so the management does not not kick us out for taking over half of their tables. She is also responsible for the club's greatest triumph: the creation of an annual tournament which in its first year drew around fifty people from several states and got the club (and yours truly in particular) on the front page of the state's largest newspaper. She is also at least partially responsible for the club's greatest shame: the Napkin Incident of '07. The less said about that painful chapter of our history the better though.

I think it is about time to reveal some of the male members of the club. Hmm, that doesn't sound quite right. We have guys that play too, is what I am trying to say. Aside from my shining masculine example there are several other Y chromosomes hanging out at our den of inequity. Lamar comes to mind first, perhaps because of all the stereotypes he breaks effortlessly. He looks like a wide receiver in the offseason, with the only faint tinge of nerdiness being a pair of fashionable glasses he wears occasionally (perhaps he has a Clark Kent alter ego he is perfecting?) Good enough with computers to buy a new house, and strong enough to lift heavy furniture by himself when he was helping me move; he would be a good candidate for a nemesis if he wasn't such a nice guy. As it is, I am not jealous at all...

Lamar's good friend and former partner in crime (or tutoring underprivileged children as they claim, still sounds like a scam to me) is Victor. He recently passed the bar (and after he finishing drinking took some big legal test). Thankfully, this led to new employment which takes some time away from his regular routine of studying list after list and practicing with the best players he can find before coming to Panera and mopping the floor with us (which was very unsanitary and seemed a rude way to celebrate beating us at scrabble). He may, in fact, have outgrown us a bit, but hopefully the continued improvement of some of the players at the club and his limited time for study will eventually let us catch back up. He still drops by occasionally and if one of us is fortunate enough to beat him we can be assured of his presence the next week to restore order to the universe through a merciless pounding of the earlier winner.

There is also Michael who does telemarketing by day and competitive square dancing by night. He is randomly bilingual. I keep wondering if he is like the guy who got hit by a car and came out of a coma able to speak another language, but with no memory of their former life. He claims that one day he got the urge to go to the library and "look up scrabble" (does that mean he did not know what it was before that?) and while there he stumbled across our club listing (scribbled by some unknown benefactor in the back of a reference book?) However it happened, he now drifts through the club like a tumbleweed with a beret. Strolling in late, playing some bingoes (at least one of which will be challenged as not in the dictionary, but apparently good in Mother France) then disappearing early, presumably to hustle somewhere in the underground world of illicit square dancing. Pondering the mystery of Michael gives me a migraine (and a slight accent somehow). Time to rest. I will wrap up the rest of our Crusty Crew (like the bread, not anything else you may be thinking) next time.