I spent a couple of weeks recently with my two grandchildren and, as usual, learned some more about human nature. My grandson is 9 and his sister is 4. He is a quiet, reflective, contemplative child and she is a drama diva. She creates a storm in a room and he studies the swirling patterns. They are as alike as fire and water and inseparable.
My grandchildren’s parents, in the belief that the third time is indeed the charm, had lifted off to Florida, to finally take the cruise that had been destroyed by Hurricane Irene in August 2011 and diverted by Debby in June 2012. May: May 2013 seemed a good month to give it the third try. And once again, I joined with Bride One in the nurturing of the grandbeauties.
While his parents were away, I taught my Xavion (nicknamed “Jink”) to play chess. He took to the game. He understood the constraints and freedoms of the various pieces and adopted an attacking strategy with his knights. I sat on the couch and he sat on the floor and I was sore afraid that a 9-year-old novice was going to defeat me. This did not make me happy.
When he was younger, my son asked me to teach him to play pool. I bloviated about commitment and practice and time but when he decided to learn, he became accomplished in what was to me, an incredibly short time. I have more than 40 years of pool-playing experience and I can no longer outshoot him. I never “let him win” when he was learning; I believed that that would diminish the accomplishment for him. (And I could never tamp down my competitive nature.) I carried that philosophy over to the teaching of chess to my grandson.
I am not a chess master: I learned the game when I was in art school in Pittsburgh. Students played each other on lunch break, and I played with my fellow attendants on the night shift at the psychiatric hospital. I learned by listening, losing and doing. I read no manuals and studied no masters. I just played chess. I taught my grandson the moves of the pieces and the objective of the game, and we played 4 games. In one of the four, I shot sweat in an attempt to avoid a draw.
On another day, my granddaughter came whining down the steps: “Jink won’t let me win.”
“He’s not supposed to,” I told Imani. “That’s not how games are played. You have to try to defeat him. It wouldn’t be fair for him to just let you win.”
I had heard him admonishing his sister: “Imani! You have to try harder!”
Later that day, I heard her triumphant cry. “Jink let me win!” I climbed the steps to the gaming room, and watched the two children manipulate their game controllers. The game was in “demo” mode, and my grandson was doing nothing to evade the spins, punches and kicks from his little sister’s player. He did not seem to be unhappy, while his sister was ecstatic. I wondered about the lesson learned and demonstrated there. I went downstairs and thought about it.
There have been Internet stories of teams that let a player with Down’s syndrome score a touchdown and a 7-year-old cancer survivor to do the same. Those who granted the gift lost nothing, and perhaps, gained much. Maybe my grandson learned that lesson from my refusal to yield to him in those four chess matches.
And in that regard, I believe that the 9-year-old was the bigger man.