Attitude

My word for the week is ‘attitude.’ It’s a very good word. It seems to be the key to many things in life. The wrong attitude can prevent one from getting the job, being content, achieving potential, accepting life’s challenges, making the grade. It is essential to maintain the proper attitude in life; otherwise we cannot survive life’s challenges. And besides all that:

Last night we played Scrabble. Peggy always wants to use an alternate rule where one may trade a letter from his rack for one already on the board, as long as at every moment there is a valid word in that place. Not far into the game, I switched my “F” for a “T,” allowing me to make the word “attitude.” The initial “a” was on the red square in the lower left corner of the board. There was already a “t” in the space to the right of that. The final “e” came to rest on the red space at the bottom, middle of the board. The beginning and end of the 8-letter word were both on red spaces. A red space means “triple word” score. The face value of the word was only 10, but that was tripled twice to equal 60, plus 50 points for a “Scrabble” (using all 7 tiles on one’s rack,) so “attitude” was worth 110 points, cinching the game. My attitude at that point was 110%. And that’s how I chose the word “attitude” as my word for the week.