Legacy Writing 365:198

I first began playing Yahtzee with Lynne and her sister Liz in the months and years after their mother died. Drawn closer together by that event, we formed many of our “friend traditions” then: making bad home movies, baking wonderful holiday goodies, taking road trips to Atlanta and Birmingham to shop, haunt record stores, and see concerts. And then there was Yahtzee, where we honed our table repartee to the point that all one of us had to do was look at the others with a certain expression on her face, and someone would mutter, “I know, I know…” and finish the sentence with the intended insult.

Those days meant I’d already played with the fiercest of opponents by the time Debby and her friends began visiting us in Houston. But with her posse came a new language–for example, when rolling the five dice, Connie would shout, “Yahtzee!” then sadly comment, “Not-zee.” After her rolls, Debby would say, “Holy shit the bed Fred.” Dottie was adept at “assuming the Yahtzee position,” which meant magically trying to roll a Yahtzee by imitating the manic expressions of the family pictured on the Yahtzee box as they watched someone roll the dice. My mother wouldn’t play with us–games brought out her paranoid conviction that we were all out to get her, including the dice–and Tom just tried to breathe through the cigarette smoke.

I would laugh at their comments and stories until my face hurt. We called Connie “Trailer Trash Connie,” a name she embraced with gusto. Dottie would be all quiet and sweet until out of nowhere she’d crack us up with a stream of profanity like I’d never heard–even when I knew hard-livin’ cowboys on the rodeo circuit.

The house was filled with raucous laughter, smoke, and great scents from the kitchen. Off of The Compound, Debby and her friends were always in search of The Perfect Margarita or a good night of bingo.

And trips to Galveston. It didn’t matter if it was bitterly cold November, we always went to Galveston to walk the beach or Christmas shop on The Strand.

I miss these crazy girls.