Playing Games

I grew up playing board games. My brother and I had an impressive collection of Lord of the Rings themed games (Chess, Stratego, Monopoly, and so on). We would play Clue with the cousins at Oma’s house almost every year.

And we both learned how to play chess at her house over the holidays.

Our older cousin would take turns teaching us how to play—he had to have the patience of a saint, because I know we were annoying to play with. We didn’t really know what we were doing, and we probably made up rules as we went. But he taught us well and, while I don’t know a lot of strategy for the game (I don’t the names of any particular moves or anything like that), I can keep my own in a casual game of chess.

Since college, my brother has really started to explore the possibilities of board games. He’s taught us how to play Settlers of Catan, Smallworld, Dominion, and so many more. I love these new games, they’re a lot of fun to play and stretch my thinking in very different ways from the old standards.

I haven’t played a “classic” game in a long time.

Until this week.

I’ve been going back to the elementary school to read with my buddy, who is now in third grade. This week he requested that we play chess as he is just learning how to play and is really enjoying it.

We sat in my former supervisor’s office, a partially played game between us.  I thought about letting him—even though it was going to be hard considering how uneven the game was at that point.

He spoke confidently about how sometimes sacrifices must be made. I agreed, and willingly left my Queen open to an attack so he could make the game more even. He missed the opportunity and took one of my pawns.

As we played, I learned that he had already lost once, but he wasn’t upset about it. Losing with grace is an important part of learning how to play a board game—it’s an important life skill. Honestly, it’s not one that I have completely mastered myself yet, and I didn’t know if it was one I was willing to tackle with my buddy.

So I decided that I wasn’t going to pull my punches in the game. (Well, I did hold back a little, but I didn’t let him win.) He let me back his King into a corner and he “sacrificed” all of his other pieces.

Finally, he sat there and studied the board. He tried to move his King, but each square he would say, “That won’t work.” Then he just sat there staring. He said, “I don’t know what to do.”

I waited for about a minute for him to concede the game. But he didn’t. He just stared.

“Do you want to call it a game and start a new round?” I asked.

His eyes brightened as he nodded vigorously.

So we reset the board. And we started again.