Victor's fiery new beginnings

Another little tile has made its way out into the world. With the help of two tile-helpers who rescued Victor from the sea of words he was drowning in .... the master wordsmith has carved out a new life .... or at least a very healthy diversion from the matters at hand.

Victor E. had been struggling for a very long time to find a place on his Scrabble board to lay down his seven letter word and score 50 bonus points. It's the same thing that always happened to him in Scrabble ... you get some big really special word and there's no place to put it. But who's going to part with any segment of a seven letter word that you know will get you 50 extra points if you can only find room for it?

Such is the dilemma Victor faced when, after years of word jumbles, crossword puzzles and Boggle, he faced the ultimate word dilemma of Scrabble. Victor had been trying to figure this out for so long that he'd reached the point where he felt like he needed a glass of wine, or two. So (enabler that I apparently am) I slipped him into a drawer in the ladies room at Total Wine in Fort Lauderdale. With 8,000 different kinds of wine there, who knows how much trouble he may have gotten into during the five weeks he lived at this store.

We do know that on Oct. 25, the tile-rescue team of Sherry and Rucci intervened and encouraged the stymied Victor to take a leap from his sea of words and delve into new territory.

In an afterpost, Sherry writes: "Victor decided to give his brain a rest and move on up the highway to try something more physical. He decided to take a big leap and get out of his comfort zone."

Victor joined Sherry at the South Carolina Fire Academy for a course in Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF) and she e-mailed loads of pics that tell the tale.

"He stayed in a dorm with other firefighters from other places in the country, where he was exposed to a whole new world other than crossword puzzles and Scrabble," Sherry notes in her e-mail. "Wow, was he surprised at this whole new world exposed to him. Victor worked as part of a team and learned all about air crafts and emergencies involving rescue and fire. He learned how to operate a crash truck designed for aircraft firefighting. This class totally removed Victor from the game of Scrabble. Sometimes it makes sense to stop obsessing on something so difficult, and then when you go back to the 'game' your outlook is fresh and you have a better sense of clarity when trying to put your words together.

"Victor graduated with a certificate and was able to make his way far from the United States to exercise his new
training. Thanks to R and R, Victor found a new home, and will be able to live happy. Besides that, he has become an expert at Scrabble, and has no problem putting the words together anymore."

The firefighters liked the word-happy Victor. "Victor was a lot of fun to have at the academy," writes Sherry. "The firefighters and fire officers that I met welcomed Victor as one of their own. He was welcomed as part of the team and went through a lot of physical and mental training in a 48-hour period. His life has been changed forever."

C-H-A-N-G-E-D, as in seven letter word with 50 bonus points.

Sherry's right. Sometimes people do have to stop obsessing about things and leap out of their comfort zone and see where it takes them. Word has it that Victor is now finding more places for some very fine seven-letter words in his life ... words like gumdrop, firefly, mystery, romance, bubbles, flutter and loopydo. OK, so he sometimes makes words up ... so contest it if you dare. But remember that if it IS a word, you will lose your turn.