Funktionslust. It is the pleasure in doing what one does best. A dancer. A singer. A cheetah. A painter. There is a pleasure in the doing. It is a significant pleasure, and it is not just the pleasure of a job done or the admiration of an audience. It is a joy that begins when the pianist limbers up his fingers in an empty house.

I love the word itself. It looks made up, for one thing. It looks more than vaguely vulgar. I play with the sound, the meaning, the origins. I have fun with the word. For words – words are my funktionslust. Spoken words: conversations and jokes and stories and arguments. Written words: essays and stories, letters and conversations, and now electronic conversations. Word games: Scrabble of course. Boggle. My brain feels so alive when I play games. The pathways are open, wide open, all channels blazing and blaring. It is a fierce joy.

Last night, I went to scrabble club for the first time in a couple of weeks. I did not have time for club. I kept hoping Aaron would tell me he had to study for finals or something, but he was anxious to go. And honestly, it was a chance to touch base with him before leaving for weeks. (Nothing like a commute for some good mother-son time.) So off we went.

Twelve people were there. (Ordinarily there are at least double that number.) One rusty expert, the rest novices or low intermediates. I wandered around, looking at the boards of the games in progress. Saw a couple of beautiful plays and some terrible plays. Eventually another player showed up and Aaron was paired up with her, and then a couple of the earlier games were finishing up, and I was put into the rotation. Okay, I admit, I had a bad attitude. I was thinking “oh, great, I won’t get any good practice in before nationals; there’s hardly any competition here.” But I’m trying to be a grownup, a good human and all, and so I joined in. From the first rack, I could feel the joy. The funktionslust. The anticipation triggered by a blank score sheet and the clock at 25 minutes. The sheer fun of taking a rackful of consonants and finding a 40 point double-double through a couple of vowels. I love playing. It makes me happy. I came home so revved up I couldn't sleep for hours.

What are we born to do? That’s part of the journey for all of us, figuring that out. I’m wired to write. I’m built to hike. I love to play.

More on the driving front: I’ve been a foolish foolish woman, flaunting the zeroes as I’ve been doing. So the fates have slapped me. A couple of hours ago, Daniel managed to take down two of our cars in one accident. He backed out of the garage, somehow locked the car he was driving into the side of the convertible in the driveway, and the two cars engaged in some kind of duel to the death. The convertible lost, but it was close. So I now own two reasonably expensive nearly-mortally-wounded automobiles. I think that puts the tally at 0 tickets and 1 accident, but it may count as 2 accidents.

He looked so stricken afterwards, as if thinking: wait, wait, pause, let’s reset this game, I got off to a bad start! We both stood in the driveway silently for a while, then made a couple of jovial attempts at jokes. Neither of us ate lunch.