The Game of Kings

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

Son #3 and his wife sent posted a sweet Marco Polo video recently of three of their children singing a Primary song as part of Sunday church in their living room. Their two-year old, on the other hand, was busy transferring toys from one end of the room to the other and back again. I guess that counts as a 75% success rate. While we never had to hold church at home, convincing our children to embrace appropriate Sabbath day behavior turned out to be a mythical goal which eluded us completely, except maybe for the month everyone had the chicken pox–and they were too sick to resist.

But we kept trying, and one Sunday afternoon, my husband came upon a brilliant idea which he was sure would engage all the children old enough to have any kind of small finger dexterity. He would teach them to play chess! The Game of Kings! It had multi-pronged advantages, he assured me. It was a tranquil game which seemed within the bounds of appropriate Sabbath Day activity; the kids had to learn concentrate (thereby dimming the decibel level–we hoped); they had to think several steps ahead (requiring problem solving); they had to develop patience (while they watched their opponent’s strategy); and best of all, my husband figured he’d consistently beat the pants off them (which may or may not have involved an element of revenge for the loss of many nights of sleep over the years).

My husband was an exceptional player. As a college student, one of his favorite BYU professors included in his syllabus for his psychology classes that students could earn an automatic “A” on the final exam if they could beat the professor at chess. It was an offer my husband never even considered trying to resist. (Somehow a six-pack of Diet Coke was involved as the entrance fee—which strained our tiny newly married budget a bit, but my husband was certain of the outcome so, in his eyes, it was a worthy investment.) The big day of The Challenge came. Sure ‘nough, my husband beat the professor two out of three. A good-natured loser, the professor paid the agreed upon reward. But my husband—who has always had a rigid, straight-arrow moral compass–had a pang of conscience and took the final anyway. (He aced it.)

We were both stunned when his Sunday activity plan worked. The kids loved the game. For several years, most Sunday afternoons there were two or three boards spread out on the living room floor. (My grandchildren still use one of those old, seriously worn boards which is visible from under the edge of our entertainment center as I write.) And no matter which child he played, my husband won. For a while. Then Son #1 (11 years old at the time) beat him. My husband scoffed it off as a fluke. Until it happened again. In a surprisingly short time, their dad decided to focus on teaching the “younger kids strategy because they really needed to sharpen their chess skills.”

Son #1 was elated when one of the teachers at the local elementary decided to form a chess club. He was first on the list. One afternoon a few weeks later, I overheard Son #1 discussing the weekly newspaper chess column with one of his buddies. Until that day, I hadn’t personally know anyone who had ever read the chess column! Most kids admired superheroes. Son#1 loved Bobby Fischer. That first year the chess team entered the state elementary school chess tournament—who even knew there was such a thing? They walloped their competitors. (And earned Son #1 an offer at Granite School District’s “gifted program.” He declined when he found out they didn’t have recess.)

The following year my husband was the chaperone when the chess club advisor took five students to a national elementary school chess tournament in Phoenix. Unfortunately, while they were there, our students got docked some competition points for behavior “unbecoming tournament contestants”. During one of the breaks, they had decided to try tightrope walking along the concrete edge of the four-story parking garage ramp at the tournament hotel—a stunt I’m quite sure was instigated by Son #1. Nonetheless, in the end, the team from a little, unheralded elementary school in Kearns took second in the nation.

Son #1 finally got his comeuppance when he was on a mission in Hungary. He said he played some of the old, mostly Jewish men in the park on an occasional afternoon, and he finally figured out what the designation “Chess Master” really meant–but he assured me he had learned some killer strategies. (I wouldn’t know–my strategy was to never learn to play.)

After those initial Sunday afternoon tournaments, one or another of my older children placed in at least the top three or four winner slots for every competition they entered. My husband was both delighted and chagrined at their success. To this day, now and then, when he is confronted by something our children do which astonishes him, chess or otherwise, he will lean over and whisper in my ear, “I always wanted them to grow up to be better, more successful people than we were. But do they have to be so DAMN much better?” And that’s a direct quote.