The Stress of Chess

I have been a competitive Scrabble player for the past 14 years and have 177 official tournament games under my belt. Many of these games were extremely close nail-biters that went down to the last play and quite a few of them had money on the line. The difference between coming in first or second, second or third, Scrabble glory or Scrabble goatdom, often came down to a last second decision on how I placed my tiles. Sometimes I’d win some money because I bingoed out (Scrabble speak for using all seven tiles on your last play) and sometimes I’d finish just out of the money because I got stuck with a Q at the very end. It’s often a rollercoaster ride and as you might imagine, it can be quite nerve-wracking.

This past Friday night, however, I found myself in a tournament environment 50 times more stressful than any I have ever been in before…and I wasn’t even playing. I was observing as my 8-year-old son participated in his very first chess tournament, and at times my heart was beating so fast I thought it might explode.

That my son has little to no interest in Scrabble, but has developed a love for chess, is perhaps ironic, but I’m okay with it. I don’t want to be the dad that maniacally pushes his kids to do exactly what he wants them to do, so he could sculpt them in his image. I’m more of the “let them try different stuff until they find what they like” sort of dad. So when my son stumbled across chess while at school and displayed an interest, we signed him up for the school’s 12-week chess class. Lo and behold it turned out he had a bit of a knack for the game (he can already beat me without my letting him…not that that says much) so we decided to let him try a kid’s tournament.

So there I was on Friday night, looking through glass as my son and 17 other kids played in a two-hour tournament. Most of the parents just dropped off their kids and came back later, but I wanted to stick around to see how my son did. In retrospect that may have been a mistake, because had someone taken my blood pressure during this two-hour span, I’m certain I would have immediately been sent to the E.R.

I watched as my son got his opponent in check and didn’t notice; I watched as his opponent made an illegal move that my son tried to explain to the kid you can’t do, only to be ignored; and I watched as my son clearly lost interest in his third game and started making any random move just to get it over with. It took every ounce of willpower I could muster not to pound on the glass or go barging through the door to get my son’s attention and correct whatever odd injustice was taking place on the chess board. If your kid’s in a soccer match you can scream stuff from the stands, but if he’s in a chess match you have to bite your lip bloody and let the pieces fall where they may. My lips were a bloody mess by 8:30.

As it turns out, my son ended up winning two games and losing one (with two others called on account of taking too long). I was very proud of him (despite the fact that watching him almost gave me a massive coronary) and he seemed to enjoy the experience and indicated that he wanted to do it again.

A couple of hours later I spoke to my brother, whose 17-year-old son is a very high-ranked chess player and was the 10^th-grade New Jersey state chess champion last year. I told him how stressful it was watching my kid play and being powerless to help, and he chuckled knowingly and said, “You just described the last decade of my life.”

The thought of having to deal with an entire decade of watching my kid play chess terrified me at first, but then I realized it could be worse. How much more stress would it be on me if I had to sit by quietly while I watched my kid play competitive Scrabble?

Past and Present Tense

I’m writing this blog by hand! Okay, well, this is the version typed into my computer after having written it by hand, so you’re losing the spontaneity, but the point is that these words were originally written with a Uniball Vision fine-tipped pen (black ink) in a spiral notebook (wide-ruled).

And it was kind of weird writing in the past tense—as though I’d already written this thing I was writing at the time—but it seemed the thing to do, since I knew that later I’d have to type it anyway, so if I used the present tense while typing up something I’d already written, it would seem disingenuous.

I suppose I could have written this whole thing in the present tense when handwriting it in the notebook originally, and then just scanned in the original pages and posted that version to my blog, but honestly, my handwriting isn’t very legible to begin with, and I happen to be writing this while on an airplane experiencing turbulence, so the likelihood of you being able to make out much of what I wrote would be slim to none. (Although, ironically, while I was writing that last sentence, the turbulence calmed down considerably, so the writing wasn’t that bad.)

And I now realize that with all this self-reflection—and moving back and forth between present and past tenses, as though I were an extra in the film “Memento”—I’ve strayed horribly far from the point I was trying to make in the very first sentence of this blog. I’m writing this by hand!

I have my laptop with me, but the battery is running low after playing three games of Scrabble in which I was humiliated by the computer; so I decided to power down and put away the laptop so I didn’t have to look at his smug little screen anymore.

Now I’ve whipped out the notebook and am writing hand to paper. I’m making a big deal about this, because these days, who writes this way anymore? Seriously, I’m having a hard time remembering the last time I sat down and wrote by hand for as long as I’ve been doing since I started writing this entry. And that’s probably another reason that my handwriting is so lousy. I’m out of practice. And I bet you are too. And you. And you. And especially you.

Writing by hand is a lost art, like metallurgy and phrenology. Computers may be convenient and efficient, but if by using them we sacrifice our penmanship, are we not eroding our very humanity? Give a man a pen and he can write for a day; teach a man to pen and he can write for a lifetime. Okay, I’ll admit I’m going off the rails a bit here, but I’ve been in the air for the past three hours and I’m starting to go a little stir crazy.

Anyway the point is/was…um…not really sure anymore. I’m fairly certain there was a point at one time, but I think I’ve become so distracted by the process of writing by hand that whatever the point was is lost somewhere in the ink.

And if you’ve read this far, I apologize. Nobody should be subjected to the hopeless ramblings of a man using a tool as antiquated as a pen. I assure you that my next blog entry will be written on a computer. (I mean, the original blog will be written on a computer. Obviously this blog was written—in the sense of typed—on a computer, but that was only after this blog was first written—in the sense of created—with pen and paper. But I think you got all that.)

I’ll be quiet now.

I’d Like to Thank the Academy for Getting Me Through My Dental Cleaning

Today I had a dental cleaning—one of life’s many necessary evils. Indeed, it is one of the more evil of the necessary evils. The thing that makes them particularly heinous to me is the fact that the dental hygienist is in close proximity to various numbing agents, but it never seems to occur to her to use them. Maybe she figures that the discomfort she inflicts by digging under my gums with metal scraping instruments is the kind of thing a strapping adult male like me should easily tolerate. Or perhaps she figures that the overt pleasantness she exudes during the procedure should itself act like an anesthetic upon my throbbing mouth. Well, in either case she’d be wrong. She cleans while I suffer.

Over the years, though, I’ve developed a pretty solid method for at least tolerating my dental cleanings without crying like a babe fresh out of the womb. To take my mind off the violence going on inside my oral orifice, I concentrate extremely hard on one of two things—Scrabble or the Oscars. If it’s a Scrabble dental cleaning day, I think about what club and tournament players call “bingo stems.” That’s a series of six common letters that, when combined with another letter, can get you a seven letter word and a 50-point bonus. So, for example, the bingo stem “SATINE” when combined with an A gets you ENTASIA or TAENIAS. I’ll mentally go through the whole alphabet trying to remember every seven letter word you can get from “SATINE” and once done I’ll move on to “SATIRE,” and so on. Usually, by the time I get to the bingo stem “STONER” it’s time to rinse and spit, and my agony is over.

Today, however, knowing that the Academy Award nominees would be announced, I decided to make it one of my Oscar dental cleaning days. I start with the year I was born—1969—and go through year by year up to the present, trying to remember what won the Oscar for Best Picture. So when the scraping of my bottom back molars began I instantly thought, “1969 – Midnight Cowboy. Great movie. Gritty—just like my teeth are starting to get from the scraping.” For the next 15 minutes I continued my personal coping strategy…

1970 – Patton. Guess it was okay but kind of (Ouch! That was a nerve!) overrated.

1971 – The French Connection. At one point Gene Hackman drives past my high school in the famous chase scene. Cool!

1972 – The Godfather. I bet if my dental hygienist touched Don Corleone this way she’d end up sleeping with the fishes.

1973 – The Sting. Yup, felt the sting on my lateral incisor just now.

1974 – The Godfather Part II. Great movie, but I still can’t understand how anyone thinks it’s better than the first one.

1975 – One Flew Over the (Owwww! You caught my lip!) Cuckoo’s Nest. What I wouldn’t give for some of the sedatives McMurphy took right about now.

1976 – Rocky. The first one of the best pictures I saw in the theater. By round 15, Balboa’s mouth was only slightly bloodier than mine is at the moment.

1977 – Annie Hall. Woody at his finest. I bet he thinks about baseball during dental cleanings.

1978 – The Deer Hunter. I can’t believe I still haven’t gotten around to (Yikes! Watch it with that thing, it’s sharp!) seeing it.

1979 – Kramer vs. Kramer. The first year I remember watching the Oscars. Rooted for Dustin Hoffman to win Best Actor and was ecstatic when he did! I was not like other kids my age.

1980 – Ordinary People. I know everyone thinks Raging Bull got robbed, but I still prefer Ordinary People.

1981 – Chariots of Fire. One of my favorite (Ahhh! Another nerve!!) movies of all time.

1982 – Gandhi. Okay, this time I was like normal kids and rooted for E.T. I wonder what dental cleanings are like on his planet.

1983 – Terms of Endearment. Give me the shot! GIVE ME THE SHOT!

1984 – Amadeus. Another one of my favorites. What the hell ever happened to Tom Hulce?

1985 – Out of Africa. What a snooze-fest. I’d rather have another dental cleaning than see that dreck agaAAAAAAAHHHHH. Okay, maybe not.

1986 – Platoon. Very good movie—remember almost nothing about it.

1987 – The Last Emperor. Another one I need to see…when I have three hours to kill.

1988 – Rain Man. Another Dustin (Whoa! Here she goes with that sucky thingy!) Hoffman classic.

1989 – Driving Miss Daisy. Tough to know what was slower moving—Miss Daisy’s car or the movie.

1990 – Dances With Wolves. All I can think about are canine teeth! Canine teeth! Please get off my canine teeth!

1991 – Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal Lecter would be (Aaaargggghh!) enjoying himself about now.

1992 – Unforgiven. I thought I didn’t like westerns. I thought I didn’t like Clint Eastwood. So how come I liked this movie so much?

1993 – Schindler’s List. Great movie but I can never (Aaack! That’ll leave a mark!) think of it without picturing Jerry Seinfeld and his girlfriend making out in the theater.

1994 – Forrest Gump. Run, Forrest, run! As far away from the dentist’s office as you can!

1995 – Braveheart. Not feeling very brave right now.

1996 – The English Patient. I always get the sense that I’m the only person under the age of 70 who actually liked this movie.

1997 – Titanic. Never saw it. Never will. “And Iiiiiy-iiiiiiiy-iiiii am in lots of pain!”

1998 – Shakespeare in Love. Great movie. So was Saving Private Ryan. But I like Shakespeare in Love more. So there!

1999 – American Beauty. Same year as American Pie. Tough to get those two confused.

2000 – Gladiator. Can’t help but think, “Joey, do you like movies about Gladiators?”

2001 – A Beautiful Mind. Two years in a row for Russell Crowe! Who’d of thunk a movie about a mathematician could be (Gaaaaaahhh!!! Seriously??? I thought you already got that tooth!) so fascinating.

2002 – Chicago. It was entertaining, but Best Picture? Really, people? Really?

2003 – Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. This cleaning is starting to feel as long as the entire trilogy.

2004 – Million Dollar Baby. Clint Eastwood again. I thought I didn’t like him, but he keeps on proving me wrong.

2005 – Crash. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

2006 – The Departed. Far from Scorsese’s best, but at least he finally got the damn thing.

2007 – No Country for Old Men. Far from the Coen Brother’s best, but at least they finally got the damn thing.

2008 – Slumdog Millionaire. I remember that advanced screening I got to go to with Danny Boyle taking questions afterwards. That was a cool (Aaaahhhh! Be done already, you vile woman!) experience.

2009 – The Hurt Locker. No movie title could possibly describe my mouth better right now than this one.

2010 – The King’s Speech. Another one I haven’t seen. Maybe I’ll skip my next dental cleaning and watch this movie instead.

2011 – The Artist. A silent movie winning Best Picture in 2011!!!! Can it get any cooler than that???

2012 – Argo. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggooooo!

And suddenly I ran out of years, but the hygienist still had two teeth left to work on. Crap! I had nothing to distract me from the next 90 seconds of pain and misery. Well, maybe if I start memorizing Golden Globe winners I’ll be ready for my next cleaning.