Chess

The last time I was home, I wound up playing a game of chess against my dad while waiting for my brother at a chess academy he recently started taking lessons at. And I checkmated him for the first time in my life.

Granted, he had the disadvantage of inheriting the game board from my brother, who lost three pieces to me (a knight and two pawns) early on as he's still fairly new to chess. But still, were I still in middle school, this probably would've been the crowning achievement of my life up to that point. I'd always looked up to my dad as the chess master, even though he's admitted himself that he's always been just an amateur player since he was little. Before that day, I'd never beaten my dad at chess before, and I don't remember if we'd ever tied either - it feels more like he'd either win or the game would just end early cause of dinner or something. All I can remember are all of the times he'd chastise me for not thinking ahead enough and then proceed to trash all of my pieces.

During the course of that match, I could feel my pulse rise... I usually avoid playing chess because when I get really into it; I get pretty stressed (which is also true of competitive video games, as I mentioned a couple of posts ago). It takes me a while to try and visualize the possible moves that could happen after each of the possible moves I could make, and sometimes I have to picture the same sequence of moves several times before realizing what the final result would be. Which winds up taking an annoyingly long time and usually grates on the patience of who I'm playing against.

It didn't help that there was this six-year-old at the academy who decided to comment on our game throughout the course of it, which included pointing out all of the moments I could have won (I think I called check almost ten times before finally winning... yes, I suck. -_-) but didn't, making noises every time I made a wrong move, and complaining incessantly, "Why are you thinking so hard? It's so easy!" I swear part of me just wanted to smack him every time he made a snarky comment. Freaking six-year-old.

Apparently he told my mom while we were taking a restroom break that I'm pretty good, for someone who's never taken chess lessons before. And that I just think too hard sometimes when the solution is actually pretty simple. Says the kid who's already been taking lessons for two years, when I haven't played a game of chess for a few years... even if I am almost four times his age. Ugh, now that I say that, what have I been doing with my life?

As annoying as it was, I guess it's not everyday that you get humbled by a six-year-old. If anything, I was more amazed at how much he knew, for someone so young. I don't think I ever was that clever when I was his age... (I almost didn't make it into first grade at my old school, but that's another story.)

But honestly, I don't think I want to look at another chess board for a long while now.