alexpgp | LJ Idol 6.23: Underdog

Among the benefits of the chess class taught by a member of the camp's staff in the dining hall during the "quiet hour" scheduled after lunch was finding myself within a few feet of – and among the first in line for – the Good Humor truck that arrived daily to dispense sweet, frozen treats when the hour of imposed respite was over.

At the time, it was the only benefit I could identify, because in all other respects, chess was pretty frustrating. I had begun the class with a fundamental knowledge of the way the pieces moved, but soon found myself rudderless, a multiple victim of simple mating attacks and over-the-board campaigns of destructive maneuvering.

I kept at it, though, for the sake of being at or near the head of the line to buy a "Strawberry Shortcake" or a "Chocolate Éclair" ice cream bar. I finished second from the bottom in the camp's end-of-summer tournament, and then only because the kid who placed last quit the tournament after his first game.

The following school year was a challenge, academically. In addition to my usual nemesis – French – I now also had to deal with algebra, which offered its own kind of aggravation. Taken one small piece at a time, algebra made perfect sense to me. But when the time came to actually make the animal do something, well, I had no idea how to proceed. If French had been a source of Cs and the occasional B on my report cards in seventh and eighth grades, with algebra, I now faced the prospect of actually failing a school subject for the first time.

One afternoon a week or so before Halloween, I dropped by our local paperback book store with 60 cents burning a hole in my pocket. I needed to distract myself with a book, because school was becoming unbearable. While browsing, I was surprised to find a book on chess. It had an outlandish and unlikely title, something along the lines of How to Play Devastatingly and Brilliant Winning Chess. It was filled with diagrams of chess positions and arcane move descriptions like "P-KN3" and "BxQ" which made no sense to me at the time, but it seemed just the thing to take my mind off topics in French civilisation and the distributive law in algebra.

The notation was actually pretty easy to learn, and I zipped through the book in a couple of weeks. I recall being struck by the fact that the winning moves in the diagrammed positions were possible only because things occurred in a certain sequence. The Rook takes the Knight there so that now, even though the Rook is captured in reply, the pawn that was protected by the Knight is no longer protected, so now the Queen takes the pawn and it's checkmate!

As I vainly tried to memorize what French verbs used être as the auxiliary verb in the passé composé, I started to play chess after school with my two best friends, and I actually started to win the occasional game, though mostly by accident, at first. And though I couldn't find the roots of a quadratic equation to save my life, as Easter approached, I could increasingly find ways to checkmate my friends over the board.

A little after Easter vacation that year, something "clicked" for me in math. It suddenly became clear to me that if I commuted the terms here, then applied the distributive law like so, followed by a few more steps, in a certain order, that I would eventually get the answer. The algebra Mrs. Haines had tried to teach us since the previous September crystallized over a matter of days, it seemed. By the time I took the state-wide "Regents" examination, it all made sense to me. I walked out of the exam room feeling pretty good.

On the last day of school, as our class was being dismissed for the summer, my homeroom teacher took me aside and told me the principal wanted to give me my report card personally. When I got to his office, I found Mrs. Haines there, too.

"Good afternoon, young man," said Mr. Follansbee, the principal. "How are you, today?"

"Fine, I guess," I said. What was going on? I wondered.

"Take a seat," he said, gesturing toward a seat at a desk at the window. I sat down.

"Mrs. Haines and I were just discussing your score on the algebra Regents examination," said Follansbee. "You know, you did pretty well." I smiled. "In fact," he continued, "both she and I think your improvement over these past few weeks is nothing short of a miracle." My smile got bigger. "So we were wondering if… you would do a couple of problems here for us right now so we could see how you do it for ourselves. Do you mind?"

I had no objection. In fact, ever since algebra had stopped being a mystery to me, I sort of enjoyed doing it (almost as much as I enjoyed playing chess), so I gladly accepted a pencil and zipped through the three problems that were typed on the sheet that Follansbee gave me. When I was finished, Mrs. Haines picked up the paper, and as she looked at it, her eyebrows rose and a "doesn't that beat all" expression appeared on her face. She then smiled, looked at Follansbee, and gave a little shrug.

The principal picked a report-card-sized envelope from his desk and handed it to me, and then shook my hand. "Thank you for stopping by my office," he said. "It was a pleasure meeting you. I wish you the best of success in high school, and beyond." I thanked him, said goodbye to Mrs. Haines, and took my leave. On the way home, I opened the envelope to look at my Regents algebra score. Ninety-eight! Wow!

The result was enough to earn a final grade of B in math, and I had managed to squeak by with a B- in French. Needless to say, my parents were happy.

A few days later, I was back at camp, where soon after, I could be found at the chess board during the rest hour, learning more about the game, waiting for the Good Humor truck, and sizing up my opponents. I was starting as a solid underdog, chess-wise, but the summer was young, and felt pretty good about my prospects.

The fact was, though, I was already on a winning streak.