What's the word?

Ooky wanted to play hangman the other day. He tells me he wants to be the person who decides what word we're doing, and I'll be the guesser. I agree and he starts writing down dashes to represent where the letters will go.

I'm assuming, since we'd just been talking about Star Wars, that the word he's going to try and make me guess is Star Wars. The number of dashes don't fit, of course, but I knew they wouldn't. Invented Spelling Hangman is always a bit more fun anyway. :)

So I start guessing S and T and throw an R in there and I'm pretty sure that we're headed for Star Wars. I guess a W and he says "No."

"Are you sure there's no W?" I ask.
"Yep."

Hmmm. So I start thinking of all the other words he might be doing, taking out some vowels of course because he generally forgets about them and we stick them in later.

"Mom" he says. "I'll give you a hint. How about you guess a letter...that kinda looks like a ghost that's upside down."

What?

"Oh," I say. "U."

A vowel? Wow.

"Correct!" he answers, and writes it down.

So now I'm totally confused and the letters I'm guessing aren't fitting in. Finally I'm ready to give up.

Ooky says, "Why don't I just tell you what the word is."

Ok.

"It's 'struggle', Mom."

Struggle?

"Yes, Mom. Struggle."

Well, alrighty then.