“I hate luck!”
– Son

We all hate luck when it works against us, don’t we? In Son’s case, the luck he so much despised was the wind in my sails as I moved my two knights into a striking position, about to kill his king in our friendly Easter holiday afternoon game of chess.

I don’t know how to play chess. I don’t know how the pieces are supposed to move, and until I started to write this, I didn’t even know that those little horses are “knights”. But somehow, that’s how the game was going down, and we both, Son and I, knew that I had him.

“Ha ha! You will never get me, because I can switch the king’s and the bishop’s positions … like this,” Son said.

“Wait, wait, wait, you can’t do that. Why would you be able to do that?” I said, and sighed, because I had been down this road before.

Son doesn’t enjoy losing. Also, Son has a short fuse.

“Because it’s a RULE! THEY TAUGHT ME THAT AT THE CHESS CLUB!”

And I had thought he spent his Friday afternoons simply eating raisins with the chess teacher.

“I don’t know the rules so you can fool me if you want to but you have to play by the rules. I don’t think you can do that move but even if you could, I can still take your king, with the other knight,” I said.

(Later, we asked Son’s uncle – Son’s first teacher – about the move, and it turned out that he had been talking about “castling”, but had got some aspects of the rule a little wrong).

At this point, Son’s face was as red as a tomato. He looked really funny, that little ball of fury, but having been in that same situation a few decades earlier, only chess was table hockey, living room table was the front seat of our car, and I was Son, I knew it was time for another talk about the virtues of losing gracefully.

Me/Dad: “But, it’s not OK to act like that when you lose. When we play a game like this, somebody’s going to win, and somebody’s going to lose.”

Son/Me: “But it’s not FAIR! The game wasn’t over yet, and I could still make that move!”

Me/Dad: “It’s no fun playing with you if this is how it always ends. I don’t always win, and do you think I like to lose? Of course not. I just shake your hand and try again. There’ll be new games, and if you practice, you’ll be really good.”

Son/Me: “Uh huh. But I can make that move.”

Me/Dad: “Sometimes it’s just a matter of luck. Things happen. You’ll just have to shake it off and move on. Learn and move on, right? Right, buddy?”

And then we thumbed on that. Both times.