CheckMate!!

Vishwanathan Anand, Gary Kasparov, and any other vodka named chess players of the world, know that to be a great chess player you have to be able to plan and strategise, be steadfast, and have a pokerface. So, what do you call a person whose idea of planning and strategy is 'what's for breakfast?' To whom steadfast means stepping quickly, and pokerface is a song by Lady GaGa? (Dumbass, idiotic moron, and stupid are not on the list of possible answers.) What you get is me (in a good way)!

I first attempted chess at the tender age of 10 and learned very quickly that I stunk at it. It kind of became obvious when my younger brother could beat me in 4 moves. I stopped playing, vowing never to touch the black and white pieces to the checkered board again. But alas, my 7 year old decided she wanted to learn to play. Damn!! I swallowed my disgust, (and a lot of bad words) and diligently set out to teach her the basic ins & outs of the game. The knight moves 2 and 1/2 spaces, the rook can only move in a straight line. The queen is your most powerful piece, but she too, like the rest of the pieces can die if you aren't careful.

Every night for the last month, I have been challenged by an almost too eager child, whose ambition in life is to beat me, then challenge and beat her father, and ultimately challenge my brother (who went on to become the chess champion of his school). I have, for the moment, kept  from her the vast world of competitive chess, in the fear of unleashing hell on that world. Her skills are still too rudimentary to cause a stir in the game. Where she lacks in skill, the child definitely makes up in emotion. Every game lost is followed by an angry outburst of accusations that I am better than her because I play better. How do I tell her that she's the one who makes me play better than I've ever played in my life? Every move I envision her playing is surprisingly different from actuality. I have no choice but to be at the top of my game, because she makes me think like I've never done.

To counteract the frustration, I downloaded a chess program on the computer for her to practice. The child spends at least an hour everyday playing against the computer, and always loses. But never have I heard her cuss at the machine. Why? Losing is losing, anyway you look at it, right? Yes! But computers don't console after you lose. Neither do they encourage, wipe your tears or reluctantly play again. They play, unemotionally, as they are programmed to do, adding very little human to the being.

So it was with some astonishment (& lot of reluctance), I accepted her challenge to play again. When asked why she couldn't play with the computer, I was told "Amusive Chess', as the game is called, is anything but amusive. Losing wasn't fun and she wasn't learning anything from it. That night I realized why.

Checkmate mom!