Like Minded Individuals
"Were you a teacher in Chicago like the rest of these girls?" was the first interrogatory from my right. We had been strangers until we played mah jongg together last Monday . Now, we're old friends. And yes, we are girls , because, as we agreed over the clacking tiles this morning, somehow it's the right word to use when playing mah jongg. Rosemarie, to my left, was reminiscing about the sounds the women who played when she was a girl, and we laughed about the perfectly polished nails and the extra long Virginia Slims which were part and parcel of what mah jongg was to us, as young onlookers. Now, as a much older but not much wiser player, I'm enjoying the fact that I can make a mistake and Scarlett, a veteran of NYC and Floridian games, tells me "not to worry... girls who've been playing forever mistake flowers for one bams." I promise, in the context of the game that makes sense. It would be a lot simpler if the tiles were congruent bet...