Ann
Ipock
Humorist,
author, speaker
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Georgetown
Times
Mahjong can bring
on seizures
By Ann Ipock August
28, 2007
even to many of us Southerners , Well now I've heard it all. It seems
some fancy-pants researchers recently discovered that playing the game
of Mahjong can cause brain seizures. I am not making this up.Well now
I've heard it all. It seems some fancy-pants researchers recently discovered
that playing the game of Mahjong can cause brain seizures. I am not making
this up.But if I hadn't read it in the newspaper, I'd think it was a joke:
"What does the losing Mahjong player say to the winning Mahjong player?"
She says, "Well, duh, no wonder I'm losing," as her eyes roll
back in her head and an uncontrollable tremor jerks her body. "I'm
having a seizure here from this blankety-blank game!"No, no. The
truth of the matter is no one can pronounce the game and that, my friend,
is where the seizure (we call it a hissy fit in the South) comes in. In
fact, I believe we Southerners are the most phonetically-challenged region
in America (and possibly beyond), so you KNOW we can't say it and yet,
according to the Internet, there are 103,000 sites devoted to "Mahjong
pronunciation," so we're not alone.Still, we Southerners like to
stretch out our one-syllable words. But oddly go figure multi-syllable
words can also throw us for a loop. (My dad says "mahogandy"
instead of "mahogany.") But here's how Southerners stretch out
words: To family and Southern friends, my name comes out as: "A-yuu-unn."
I don't know what we have against one-syllable words, but we just don't
like them. We don't say dog. We say "daaaw www gg." And coffee
is "cawww off eeeee." Therefore, how in the Sam Hill can we
pronounce Mahjong? Perhaps "Mayyyy jawwww uuuung?" Can you imagine
how hurt the ancient Chinese who invented the game thousands of years
ago would feel, only for us Southerners to botch the name of their precious
game, then blame it on seizures for losing? Tsk tsk!
No, I'm afraid we Southerners
are better at Parcheesi now that's an easy one to pronounce (and the rules
are Simon-Says easy enough) and Monopoly (I play just to get a "Get
out of Jail Free" card never know when some distant rogue-thug-relative
might need one.) Heck, when we played Monopoly as children, we thought
Park Place was down the street near the Recreation Center. (OK, I didn't
say we were refined.)
It's for sure that Mahjong has swept our country when it makes front page
news, but I ask you: "What would Milton Bradley do?"The very
first time I ever heard of Mahjong was when I read Amy Tan's, "The
Joy Luck Club" and though the novel was great I'm always a sucker
for a book about multi-generational women I was suspicious of the game
itself, and it's no wonder. For one thing, you use tiles. Tiles! Not cards
or markers, not multi-colored plastic figures or buttons, but tiles. Where
I grew up the only tiles we ever saw were those one-inch things on the
walls of the fancy bathrooms in the Country Club section. Another thing:
The Mahjong tiles have mysterious numbers and symbols, birds and geishas.
How in the world can you decipher that stuff? You can't read it. It makes
no sense. But I'm told it's loads of fun to play. I don't know about that.
I've also read that it's a game that "employs the cognitive brain."
In other words, the intellectual part of your brain. Well, no wonder I
don't play!
Can you imagine my recent shock when my mother's best friend, Anna, rushed
out the door after her morning coffee heading to her weekly Mahjong game?
But now it all makes sense. Anna was one of the few ladies in our neighborhood
(circa 1960s) that worked outside the home. (She was a well-educated nurse
and a darned good one at that.) I didn't want to seem too clueless, so
I asked her how you play. Of course, she lost me after one sentence because
she is so smart and, quite frankly, I am not. It's just as well I don't
play: I could never get the pronunciation right, I don't do intelligence
and on top of that, I'll pass on the seizure thing. Anybody up for a game
of Tiddly Winks?