TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 76

[Tobie Shapiro]

December 1, 20000000006


Dear people, treed and happy,

	I woke up again before my alarm.  And I'm 
tired.  But I just couldn't sleep.  I sit here 
resenting my inner clock.  My Circadian rhythm is 
off.  Who will save me?  I went in to wake Meyshe 
up, and he stretched and yawned.  I asked him if 
he had any dreams last night.  He nodded, yes.  I 
asked if he remembered them.  He said, "They were 
weird!"  "Tell me."  He said that he dreampt that 
people were all different colours.  I asked him 
what colours.  He said, "Green, blue, purple, 
orange, red, yellow."  The idea appealed to both 
of us.  We had a short discussion about the 
genetics of it.  Suppose I'm purple and I marry a 
white man.  Then, would we have lavender 
children?  Or maybe there is a whole set of 
recessives and dominants and it wouldn't be so 
obvious.  What a great dream!  "Does this pink 
dress go with my green skin?"


 
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Chess games

	My father taught the three of us how to 
play chess when we were old enough to move 
forward one square.  Each of us went through his 
training course, and each of us had to play chess 
with him.  I remember how proud I was when I knew 
how all the pieces moved.  It was tricky, too, 
because the pawns could move two spaces on their 
first venture out of the mold, if you wanted them 
to, but only one space thereafter.  And the rooks 
couldn't jump over anything, except when you were 
castling the king, and then it jumped over the 
king and the king jumped under the rook to 
protect the king from the enemy pieces.  Every 
piece had its special way of locomoting about the 
board, and the whole object, as far as I was 
concerned, was: number one, to protect the king; 
number two, to prevent any of your pieces from 
getting taken;  number three, to take the other 
person's pieces;  and number four, to check mate 
the other person's king.  It wasn't easy.  But I 
learned the basics quickly, quickly enough so 
that when I had the bare minimum under my belt, 
my father would play a game of chess with me.

	Of course, he played better than I did, 
having thirty two years on me.  But that didn't 
stop him from taking me on on an adult's terms. 
He looked like he was concentrating and I took 
that to mean that I had given him something to 
concentrate about.  But maybe I was wrong.  After 
all, it took him only a few seconds to make his 
move and he did so with great confidence.  BANG, 
and he moved his chosen piece to an unoccupied 
square, or worse, he moved his chosen piece to an 
occupied square and captured one of my pieces. 
Pretty much he did whatever he wanted to because 
I was a rank beginner, and as he had impressed 
upon me, he was an expert, an experienced chess 
player who could probably beat anyone at chess. 
Then, why was he playing with me and my sister, 
two little girls, and later on, my brother, a 
little boy?  And the answer is, because he could 
trounce  us soundly and make us scream and cry. 
It was triumphant, the way he beat us, 
mercilessly, wiping all our pieces off the board, 
and displaying them in a neat solid formation to 
his side.  If I took so much as a pawn of his, I 
felt hopeful and worthy.  But that was about as 
far as I got.  He took no prisoners.  He set us 
up and wiped us clean, licking his chops as he 
did so.  We were just little kids, four, five, 
six years old, and we weren't used to resounding 
defeats, not the way he did it.

	BANG BANG BANG!  ZIP!  BANG!  ZIP! 
CRACK!  BANG!  And he'd whisk another of our 
pieces away, smiling at us as he did it.  So, we 
wound up crying.  It was all just so unbalanced 
and hopeless.  ZING! And he'd sweep another of 
our pieces off the board.  Then we'd whimper. 
And he'd apologize, promising he would be easier 
on us.  But he wouldn't.  BING!  And he'd scrape 
another piece into his pile.  Then we'd cry. 
Real tears.

	"You're being mean.  You promised!"

	"I couldn't help it.  You laid yourself wide open."

	"But you promised you wouldn't."

	"What are you, a baby?  I should be able to treat you like an adult."

	An adult!?  At five?  At seven?  When 
does, "kid", stop and, "adult", begin?  Not at 
seven.  Not even at nine.  Hey, I'll bet you're 
not considered an adult at fifteen.  So here we 
were, little bitty kids, being teased by a man in 
his mid thirties.

	ZAP!  And he'd take another piece off the 
board.  Then he'd finish the game with a loud 
exclamation, "CHECK MATE!  I WIN!!"	  And 
we'd cry some more.  We'd get up to leave, go 
lick our wounds.

	"Don't go away.  Come.  Play another game."

	"No.  You'll make me cry again."

	"No I won't.  I promise I'll be gentle. 
This will just be a lesson.  I'll teach you how 
to win."

	"No."

	"Please.  Just one game.  If you don't 
like it, you can stop."  And he'd talk us into 
one more game.

	Then the tricky bastard would let us win 
so obviously that it would make us cry all over 
again.  This dance would go on for as long as we 
had the patience for it, and as long as he wanted 
it to go on.  Finally, he would ZING!  BANG! 
beat us  ZIP! BING!  terribly  ZAP!  CRACK! 
completely, and we'd be total messes, crying, 
snivelling, angry and conquered.

	"I'm not going to play with you anymore. 
You're not enough of a challenge,"  he'd  sniff. 
But he would.  Our hope that he would turn into a 
nice daddy was so strong that we'd play with  him 
again and again.  All he had to do was lure us to 
our hopes.

	The games came to an end for me the 
moment that I beat him.  Suddenly, he was not 
interested in playing a game of chess with me. 
There was no talk of chess or even checkers.  My 
sister and my brother had the same experience. 
Once you beat him, it was all over.

	That was the old man.


 
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Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net