K’s father was becoming annoyed with his adolescent son’s word choices. First “duvet,” then “loofah.” Until recently K’s father enjoyed their weekly Scrabble games, even though K’s vocabulary far surpassed his own. But the words that had begun to enter the young boy’s Scrabble lexicon were unsettling. K’s father thought back to K’s winning word last week: “exfoliate.”

K’s father imagined letters swirling in K’s head; he further imagined letters bumping into other letters to create effeminate words. After K’s father offered a word hardly worth mentioning, K played his next word: “chanteuse.” K’s father didn’t know what that word means.

K’s father stared at his remaining letters, feeling betrayed by the father-son time he so desperately wanted. K’s father scanned the board. If he were more of an “intellectual,” K’s father could have countered his son’s suspicious vocabulary with his own manly version: bolts, beard, fortress, chainsaw, dirt. While those words hardly count for anything in Scrabble, at least compared to “chanteuse” or “exfoliate,” they would have at least meant something to K’s father. But K’s father’s intelligence aside, it was too late for that. K’s father was going to lose.

It was just as well: he preferred Battleship.