Betty Bolté

I love word play. Ever since I was a child, I've played games in my head with words. To this day, I rearrange the letters in words into groups of 3 letters that make words and then alphabetize them. I have no idea anymore how or why I started doing this, but it's a habit now. It makes it easy to count the letters in a word, by the way. Which of course is of very little use, unless you're playing Scrabble (another favorite word game).

As my children started learning words, I started a word game for them to encourage them to think about the ending letters in words (that can be tricky for kids). So, I said a word and they would have to say another word that started with the last letter of my word. Then the next player did the same. We went round and round, sometimes for hours. It was and is a great game for the road. In fact, they still play this game, using much bigger words, and they are both young adults now.

Yesterday we went to a seafood restaurant to celebrate my dad's 89th birthday and my and my husband's anniversary. While we were there, my hubby and son started playing another word game I was unfamiliar with. One would say a word they could see in the room (on the decor hanging on the walls) but backwards and the other had to locate and identify the word. This was a new twist on the game, as far as I was concerned. It was limited, obviously, to only what they could see, too.

We also like to "misinterpret" what someone has said by using a different meaning for the word than what was intended. This can create a lot of strange nuances, as well as strange looks. Believe me, my kids' friends have always thought we were a bit strange with our conversations at the dinner table!

Do you play with words? What do you discuss at the dinner table?