Retro Scrabble

My  mother invited me to play Scrabble with a friend this week.

Sitting at the table with mojitos (definitely not retro), she pulls out the Scrabble game from my childhood. The nickname of my sister's junior high crush is penned on one tile holder. The other tile holders have doodles that are decades old.

She also pulls out the dictionary from my childhood. It is faded red and threadbare.

I thumb through it, careful not to let pages spill from its weakened binding.

"Copyright 1977," I say.

My two opponents, both decades older than me, enthusiastically agree that we should use it.

"We spent many dinners looking up words in that dictionary," my mother says. "It has character."

But it doesn't have ringtone, spyware, biodiesel or bling.