4Chess Master
One could say that I'm cruel. One could say that I'm heartless. One could say that I'm a bad person.
But the cold, hard fact is this: I – a fifteen year old girl – like to beat my seven-year old brother at chess.
I don't think I'm at fault in this situation. If anybody is at fault, it's probably my little brother for actually having the audacity to challenge me. He should know the odds are against him. He should know that he will probably lose. I mean, he's seven and I'm fifteen. The age difference should mean something. And yet, every time, I knock his little king piece down, he jumps up from his seat and yells:
"I demand a rematch!"
So, being the good older sister I am, I decide to humor him. I accept his challenge, calmly set up the chess pieces, show him some pity by taking out my queen and allowing him to move five steps before I make my first move, and commence the game.
And then, I crush him.
The poor boy always looks so defeated, but he isn't a sore loser. He doesn't cry. He doesn't complain. He doesn't whine and yell insults – or at least, what little seven year olds think are insults. He does nothing. Except demand a rematch.
And so, the process repeats once again.
It seems that the little dance of chess between my brother and I never ends. It's a little dance that never changes. It sometimes has a few surprises. It sometimes takes forever. It sometimes lasts only a few minutes. But it always ends the exact same way.
That is until that one day.
On that life changing day, the chess master lost to her younger, more inexperienced opponent on purpose.
It wasn't really my idea. In fact, I would much rather have continued on defeating the little guy over and over and over again. The idea was my older sister's. She had been off to college for who knows how long, and during her break, she decided to visit home like all good, devoted daughters would do. And when she saw me cruelly knocking down my – and well, I guess, her, too – brother's king with my pawn newly-turned queen, she was aghast.
She was so aghast that she took me aside and gave me a stern lecture on kindness. She told me that I needed to pity the boy, since he was younger than I was. She explained that as an older sister, I needed to be accommodating sometimes. In other words, she told me to lose against him at least one time.
I, being the prideful person I am, put up a fight. I argued that losing was a way of learning. But she wouldn't take any of it. In the end, I had to call my first defeat of the day – this time, a defeat made by my older sister. I agreed to purposefully lose to my little brother in one chess match.
So what commenced was a ridiculous little game of chess. My sister would be there watching over rapidly whispering to me to be nicer, to stop planning so much, to just charge on and make as many mistakes as possible. I tried to ignore her, but she persisted.
"You just killed his bishop! Why did you do that?" she said. "Didn't I tell you to lose?"
"If I'm going to lose, I'm doing it with dignity," I whispered back to her.
I proceeded to knock down one of his knights. She gasped in shock and shook me.
"I told you to lose!" she repeated for what must have been the millionth time that day.
"I am going to lose, but I can't just hand him the victory like that," I reasoned. "I want him to at least learn and actually fight a hard match before winning."
I moved my queen forward right in front of his castle. Basically, I was handing my queen to him. The little guy didn't notice and instead moved one of his pawns forward. I groaned. My hand was itching to knock the castle down, but my mind prevailed. I ignored the castle and just hoped that my brother would notice that he could kill my queen soon.
The match continued on like this for what seemed like hours, though it must have lasted only thirty minutes. My sister would keep doing a combination of shouting and whispering in my ear to take pity on the boy. My brother would fail to notice any of my carefully planned moves for him to get the advantage. And I would try to fight temptation to crush the boy like a bug.
Finally, we were down to only a few pieces on the chess board. I had lost everything useful, except for a knight and a pawn that was one space away from reaching the other end of the board. To let my brother take his victory, I had resigned to just moving my knight to strange and useless positions. My brother kept making these insensible moves with my sister's encouragement.
"Yes, that's a good plan!" she would say.
"Really?" my brother asked in his squeaky voice.
"Yes, do that!" she encouraged.
I rolled my eyes and prayed that this would end soon.
And so, I kept playing with my knight, while my brother advanced his king across the board. And then, he declared check. His king was right in front of my king and was ready to destroy me. If I was in for the win, I would have used my king to destroy his. If I was sane, I would have just moved my king backwards away from his king's proximity. Instead, I decided to be smart and make it seem like I didn't mean to lose. I just moved my king right into his bishop's range of direction. Triumphantly, he took his bishop and knocked my king down.
"I win!" he yelled for joy.
My sister clapped her hands happily and gave me a thumbs-up for my intentional defeat. I just sat there, feeling incredibly gloomy about what had passed.
From downstairs, we could hear the door open signaling that our parents had returned. Hearing that, my brother jumped up and ran down. My sister and I followed him, and from the top of the stairs, we could see him hop onto my father.
"Guess what?" he said, speaking in the speediness usually present when a little boy was excited.
"What?" my father and mother asked in unison.
"I beat Eva at chess!" he declared, pride present on his face.
"Really?" my mother asked.
The tone of her voice suggested that she could infer what really passed. However, she said nothing about it and proceeded to congratulate my brother on his miraculous victory. My father patted the boy on the back.
My sister and I descended the stairs, and as I saw my brother's face, all my gloominess faded.
The boy looked so happy, the happiest that I had ever seen him, and he looked so confident. As he gave a move by move reenactment of the match, I could see his cheeks flush red with joy and pride. So this was the effect of my defeat on him. It was a brilliant effect, and knowing that I was able to cause it made me feel slightly warm inside.
I ruffled my brother's hair playfully.
"Good job, little guy," I said to him as I stooped down to his level.
"I'm so happy!" he rambled on. "To think all my training on the computer actually worked!"
"Yeah, yeah," I replied. I shook my head in a gesture of my exasperation.
The boy continued to run around yelling into all the rooms – which happened to be all unoccupied by anybody – that he had actually beat me. He ran back into the living room and I caught him in a hug.
"But listen," I said pushing him away to stare straight at him. "The next time we have a match, you better be alert and careful. Because, next time, I'm going to destroy you."
A/N: This idea came to me from a similar experience that I observed, though I dramatized it a lot more than the actual truth. Reviews and critique would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Signing off...