Not About Chess

A short reflection on persuasiveness and obsession

Photo by Hassan Pasha on Unsplash

When I was nine, one afternoon a friend taught me how to play chess. He was my age, but had an older brother whom he had learned from. I didn’t have an older brother, and knew nothing about chess. I knew about checkers, and I guess I didn’t find it particularly interesting. It was fun and all, with easy rules and kind of easy to win games, but nothing to get excited about.

Chess is much more difficult because you have to think a lot, I remember him saying. I thought that was cool; I liked difficult, and thinking. So he took me to his room, that afternoon. We entered a quiet house, the shutters were lowered and little light came in. I could barely see, coming from outside. He took a folded board out of a drawer, opened it on his bed, and showed me how to position the pieces. The mattress wasn’t very firm, and that annoyed me because, as we moved, the pieces got easily displaced. I still don’t like it when things are unstable and move around; it makes me feel kind of seasick. Maybe that’s why I don’t like going on boats. 

Pawns sit upfront, they protect the big guys, he said. Then he went on to explain who the big guys were and how to move each of them and what this thing was all about. I went back home thinking that it was the coolest game ever. Overwhelming, but cool. I wasn’t a very talkative kid, Mom used to say that words had to be extracted from my mouth with pliers, like dentists do with teeth. At lunch, when they asked me how school was, all I said was ok, or good. Rarely did I embark on telling more, and when it happened, it was one or two short phrases, much in the way of an announcement. Like, I got an eight in maths today, or some other piece of good news, if any. I never said Mrs. Rossi kicked me out of the classroom because her face made me laugh hysterically nonstop. Which I kept to myself, not out of not wanting my parents to know, but because I thought it wasn’t important, even though it happened with a certain frequency and Mom would inevitably find out on parents-teacher meeting days. Mrs. Rossi did have a ridiculously funny face, and there was nothing I could do to avoid that.

So I didn’t talk about my discovery of chess right away. But at some point I had to, as I needed to buy a set of pieces and, at nine, had no money of my own. As nobody in my family knew how to play chess back then, nor had they any interest in it, they didn’t really think it was a big deal. Not that they told me explicitly; I thought it was obvious by how absent-mindedly they listened. Like, Oh did you, sweetheart? Mind passing over the salad please? 

For me, it was a big deal. It was as if I had just been catapulted into a mysterious world of complexity and magic and infinite combinations, where they spoke a secret language that even the smartest found hard to master. Granted, I had no idea about this myself, but my friend told me that his brother told him that the uncle of a schoolmate of his had been up all night to watch a chess game for the world championship that was broadcasted live on TV, where the players took hours to make just a few moves. Can you believe it, he said. I couldn’t, but I also had no evidence of the contrary. So, I believed it. And I was smitten. 

To the point that, instead of going out to play football, I’d get together with my friend to play chess in his room, until it quickly became an obsession. Naturally, my folks knew about this, but they never fully understood my excitement. For one, I was unable to sell them my excitement. What was I supposed to say, You should try playing sometimes, it’s cool? No, not my thing. In fact, I had no ability to talk others into something. An inability that continues to this day: I’m not a great persuader. I don’t even try. Which is kind of weird, because Dad was an outstanding persuader. But I guess Mom isn’t, and apparently for me her fifty percent prevailed. 

So chess became an obsession. And for the first time I got confronted with what an obsession is like for me: a fire that quickly and violently burns everything it touches but that, once it’s over, produces nothing more than a bunch of ashes. Something that lasts for a while, during which I immerse myself head to toe into it and nothing else matters, but then it abruptly ends and leaves me drained of energy and enthusiasm to the point that I don’t want to hear about it anymore. It’s not over, though: it usually comes back after a few years, with a lighter intensity. Only to go through the same cycle, until it tapers off and becomes insignificant. 

Obsessions are a curse for me, as they affect things I know I will be unable to enjoy permanently. I much prefer a longer-lasting mild infatuation, or a friendship, or even an acquaintance. Regularity, perseverance, are traits that are not much in me. And that I wish I had more of. Just a little more. 

Last week I received an email. Its object said “Remember when I taught you chess?”. I have no idea how he managed to get my address, but he did. And after almost fifty years, we reconnected. He doesn’t live in my city, but that didn’t keep us from making plans to meet again. It’ll be in a couple of weeks, I’m not even sure I’ll recognize him. “I’ll bring a chessboard”, he wrote. I haven’t played seriously in years, but now I have to brush up my game and somehow rekindle my interest. 

And dispel that obsession myth.    

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