"Are kids gettin smarter or am I getting dumber??"

Challenges come in shapes big and small,something i have come to believe a short while ago...I jus love kids,everything about them: their innocence,cuteness,pranks,constant giggles...So when my youngest cousin,(she s about seven and incredibly cute),wanted to play scrabble with me,I thought I ll play along,not wanting to see her cry.....So here i was,sitting with a tiny kid,a scarbble board in between us...

This kid,as my family recalls is by far the most brainy of the lot(which includes 8 of us)...Anyways, what do I care,she s still a kidddd,and i (whose currently prep for his gre) were gonna play scrabble...She aksed me to start,and i went about makin this word "SHADE",which is not bad considering it would be the last five letter which I would ever make(yea go ahead laugh,scrabble can be a tough game you know...sniff sniff)...

When her turn came up,I reached across to help her out,she jus shooooed me away,pushing away my arms; I was like "yeah,whatever kiddo,good luck"....she,then,quite easily makes the word "DEN"....After which we quickly make a couple of more words,and all of a sudden it jus dawns upon me,that there was a match at hand...

Being her first game ever,she still hadn't comprehended the nuances of scrabble;like when you are about to make a word, it should not end up making non sense when seen with the adjacent words...So when she tried making "AND", I told her "sweetie u cant make that word cos you see the ' D ' clashes witht the letter ' M ' and 'DM' doesnt make sense"... I was like "gotcha", finally I thought I had slowed her down....Totally unperturbed,she tells me 'Okay I ll just remove the 'D' and make the word 'AN', that makes sense right".....Arrrghhhh kids these days...


After 20 minutes she'd gone ahead to make words like goose,tree,tea and a couple of other reallllly nice words...On the other end,I had come up with words such as toe,toy,hen,ant and some really silly words...Finally i said i was feeling sleepy,an excuse to end the pitiful run.....

Next time around I think i ll jus stick to pillow fights,thumb wrestling or stone,paper,scissors(which by the way she s got an uncanny ability to beat me)....Here s a pic of me an Malvika(thats her name,we call her malu at home)....