Is that it? Is that the best you could do?

Have you heard about the proverbial slow news day where the news people tend to scratch around for something to present? Well, that’s the way I feel on this Tuesday, January 27, 2009. It’s one of those blah-blog days where the old noggin seems to be processing cold maple syrup this morning. The other day I wrote one on how the aging process takes its toll and thus far this morning I’m beginning to wonder if there is any ‘there’ there for the day. It wasn’t always this way. Back in the early 1970’s I was a chess-playing machine. We began playing at work and it appealed to me for some reason, therefore, I did my typical headfirst plunge into learning as much about it as I could. We had one fellow who was really good that worked for our company. He used to beat me regularly and it always irritated me because just before he would make his final move and announce ‘checkmate’ he would begin this low growl of a laugh that made me livid. I read books. I studied hard. I learned a variety of openings, maneuvers, defenses, and strategic approaches and I can still (vaguely) remember the day I finally beat our resident Chess Master and oh how sweet it was!

I’ve said all that to say that I most likely couldn’t even remember how the pieces move were I to try to play again. Maybe some of it would come back to me but I rather doubt it. How serious did I take it back in those days? Hey, I would go in and play against other guys who were just as obsessed as I was, at 4 a.m. in the morning before our regular shift started. How could something that was so important at that particular time no longer even make a shadow on my life radar screen today? We grow, we change, and hopefully we make progress. There’s certainly nothing wrong with chess and it was a challenging game and I spent several years working to be better at it, but somewhere along the way I put it aside just like I put away those hideous leisure suits and moved on down the road. (Just so you know, I didn’t think those leisure suits were hideous at the time, in fact, I owned several of them and had the silk floral shirts that matched!)

I do know that somewhere along the way I did begin a conscious effort to not be controlled by things like a hobby, sports, a television show, or other types of pursuits that were fun but should not have dominated my life. Back in the day when we couldn’t record a television program we often would fret if we missed a specific important episode that had been hyped and we really did want to see it. Typically, being all wrung out over missing something like that should not have upset us, but typically it did, and I’m sure these types of things still upset many today. You do, however, reach a stage in life where you begin to see how that many things you thought were important really didn’t amount to a hill of beans. (I bet you remember that scene from the movie Casablanca where Humphrey Bogart spoke these lines to Ingrid Bergman: “Ilsa, I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”) All that's left from my chess days is that one memory (vague as it is) of the day I beat George Farmer and how I was almost let down when I found him to be just as good a loser as he was a winner. Wait a minute, yeah, there's more. You see George was a genuine believer and he and I went on to be close and perhaps he was beating us all so that we would become better and when we did, he celebrated right along with us! George was the kind of guy who would have done just that. Thanks George, thanks for you being you, and for the memory. Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will try to have something from some of those lazy gray cells who decided to sleep in today. Until next time, may God bless one and all. Amen. …More later.