The Uzzle ad: The Other Grandma Called My Christmas Boring.

On Christmas my daughter left her phone on my kitchen counter. It buzzed. It was the other grandma. "Get them here by 2. Don't let her keep them all day with that boring stuff." I was standing right there with the ham. I read it twice. Then I put the phone back exactly where it was, face down, and finished carving like nothing happened. That was last Christmas. This Easter, at 1:45, my 10 year old grandson picked up my phone and called that same woman himself. Let me tell you what he said, and what changed in between. My son-in-law's mother is Pam. She has a pool, a lake house and a golden retriever named Duke. She's 61, I'm 70, and she does yoga on the dock. For six years Christmas has gone the same way. The kids come to me at 10. We open presents. I make the ham, the scalloped potatoes, the cherry pie my husband used to love. And at 2 o'clock sharp they pack up and drive 25 minutes to Pam's, where the "real" Christmas happens. She does the big presents. I do the dishes. I never complained. Not once. I told myself the kids just like the lake. Who wouldn't? But I'll be honest with you. Every year I'd watch the clock the same way they did. Only they were counting down, and I was counting how much time I had left. Last Christmas I timed it. They were in my house 3 hours and 50 minutes. My grandson Caleb asked "when are we going to Grandma Pam's" four times. My granddaughter Lily, who is 7, sat on my couch with her tablet the whole time and didn't look up when I brought her cocoa. And then I read that text. "Don't let her keep them all day with that boring stuff." Boring. My Christmas. The one I've been making for 44 years. After they left I sat in my kitchen with the dishwasher running and I cried until the dishwasher finished. I'm not proud of that. But I'm telling you the truth. Because she was right. That's what hurt. To a 10 year old and a 7 year old, my house was boring. Pie and a nice sweater and Grandma asking about school. They were being polite to me until they could leave. I tried to fix it. Bigger tree. The expensive presents they actually asked for. I even learned Uno. Lily cried when she lost, and Caleb was bored by the third hand. By February I'd stopped trying. I figured this is just what happens when you get old and the other grandma has a lake. Then in March I went to my church's spring rummage sale, and I ended up talking to a woman named Barb. Barb runs the after-school program at our church. Forty kids, every afternoon, kindergarten through sixth grade, for 16 years. If anybody knows what keeps kids in a room, it's her. I don't even know why I told her. Maybe because she asked how my Christmas was. I told her the whole thing. The 2 o'clock. The text. The word "boring." She didn't say "oh, I'm sure that's not true." She laughed, kindly, and said, "Honey, you're competing with a slot machine." She said the games on those tablets pay out a little thrill every few seconds. The dopamine kind. After a few hours of that, a living room with pie and conversation feels like nothing is happening. "You won't win by asking them to slow down," she said. "You have to give them something even faster." She said that's why most board games die in her program. A kid sits through everybody else's turn, and that's exactly when the phones come out. The one game that never sits on her shelf, she said, is one where nobody waits. It's called The Uzzle. She keeps one in her car for the kids who get picked up late. Each of you gets five little blocks with colored shapes on every side. A card shows a pattern, and you all race at the same time to build it. Whoever finishes first yells "Uzzle!" No turns. Nobody waits. The cards come in four levels, so a 7 year old and a grown man can race each other and both have a real chance. We played right there in the church parking lot on the hood of her Buick. She beat me six times. On the seventh I beat her, and I yelled so loud a man loading a lamp into his trunk turned around. I ordered one that night from The Uzzle's website. Easter was at my house this year. The kids came at 10. I hid eggs. We ate. At noon, before anybody could get bored, I dumped the blocks out on my dining room table and started playing by myself. I didn't invite anybody. Barb told me not to. Lily came over first, because she's 7 and she can't stand not knowing what something is. I gave her the easy cards. She beat me on her second try and screamed. That got Caleb. He stood in the doorway with his phone for about a minute. Then he put it in his pocket and sat down. I gave him the hardest cards. He lost to his little sister twice. He could not believe it. He said, "That was a warm-up." Then my son-in-law pulled up a chair, and I found out he's competitive. My daughter kept score on a napkin and said watching was more fun anyway. At 1:45 my daughter looked at the clock and said, "Okay guys, we need to get going. Grandma Pam is expecting us." Caleb didn't even look up. He said, "Can I borrow your phone, Grandma? I don't have her number." He called Pam himself. I heard every word. "Hi Grandma Pam. Can we come at 4 instead? We're in the middle of a tournament at Grandma's." Then he hung up and said, "Lily, you're going down." They left at 4:20. Lily cried in the car because she didn't want to go. My daughter texted me that night. "Mom, the kids talked about your house the whole way to the lake." I've read that text more times than the other one now. I'm not telling you it fixed everything. Caleb's still on his phone too much. Lily still loves that dog. But they ask for my house now. Caleb has asked twice if they can come early on Christmas this year, "so we have more time to play." And Pam? I haven't seen a text like that since. If you're the grandma they leave early. If you've ever counted the minutes while they're at your house because you know exactly when they're going to leave. It isn't you. You're not boring. You're just up against a screen that was built to be faster than you. What worked for me was giving them something even faster to do at my table, and letting them come to me. P.S. A few of the ladies at church asked me where I got it, so I'll share. I ordered mine on The Uzzle's website. It's usually $60, but they have a family promotion going and it's $30 right now. You get 30 days, and if your family doesn't love it, they give you your money back. Over 7,000 people have rated it on Amazon, and it has 4.7 stars. I'd have it on your table before Christmas. If it's still in stock, you'll find it at the link below.