November 4, 2010
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Just the Facts
…oh, and probably a hypothesis or two. I haven’t fully processed these memories and insights, haven’t concluded whether there is any deeper meaning to find here.
Primarily, this involves chess, archery and pool (billiards, not swimming or any other “pool”). It has been years since I engaged in any of those activities. Until recently, I hadn’t even recognized or considered the similarities between them for me.
In my childhood, I was very good at chess. I concentrated intently, put a lot of effort into it, and won most of the time. This wasn’t much different from other board games, or from card games, except in the amount of effort and concentration required to win. At checkers, Chinese checkers, rummy, and other games, I won almost every time I played, but they didn’t require the amount of concentrated effort that chess did. Kids didn’t like to play with me, and after one or two defeats, most adults refused ever to play with me again. I was often accused of cheating. That was ironic, because at the time I hadn’t even the vaguest idea how to cheat.
In my early twenties, working as a day shift bartender, when the bar was nearly deserted, after several occasions on which a customer asked me to shoot a game of pool with him and I responded that I didn’t know how to play, one of them offered to teach me. Once I’d learned the fundamentals, I concentrated intently, put a lot of effort into it, and won most of the time — very nearly all the time. Soon, the men I’d played started calling me a pool hustler and stopped asking me to play. I didn’t mind. Shooting pool was never fun for me: too much effort and concentration involved. It was more work than my job was, certainly.
In my early thirties, the man I was living with acquired a compound bow and taught me to shoot it. After I’d mastered the fundamentals and developed the relevant muscles, I hit the mark almost every time, just as I had done when I learned to shoot a gun. I enjoyed the activity of archery much more than firearms: the quiet focus and seeing the flight of the arrows. I never entered any archery competition. I never went bowhunting. I don’t enjoy killing animals. If I needed to live off the land, I’d probably opt to snare hares or something for the protein, but I’d forage for most of my calories.
As I was writing the above, I recalled another, similar activity I’d engaged in and enjoyed: throwing knives and shuriken. I learned to throw knives after the pool shooting and before the archery. The shuriken came later still, in my forties. That was solitary activity, often indulged late on a summer night after Doug was asleep, out in the mosquitoes under the midnight sun. A big slab of salvaged foam insulation was my backstop, and I had shredded it by the time I gained enough accuracy to hit the mark every time and lost interest in the sport.
As I said, I don’t know what conclusions to draw from all of this, if there are any. I see connections, patterns, and I just realized that my craps shooting probably fits into these patterns somehow, too. That’s all, for now.
Comments (4)
Dear Kathy Lynn,
You seem to learn the skills and then are good at the game, no matter whether it’s aiming at a target or figuring the logic of a chess game or game of pool.
And how are you at darts?
It’s been about 10 or 12 years since I played my last game of chess. My brother and I taught ourselves to play when we were kids, and I used to say I played “guerrilla chess” because I just made the moves I considered the right ones. This always stymied my more “learned” opponents, who might sometimes lose to me cause they could count 10 or 15 moves ahead based on “historical” games.
I liked playing pool, but was never that good at it, and played back when I was in my 20s, when there were lots of pool halls, er, I mean, billiard parlors around town.
I never tired archery. I shot a gun during only one hunting trip, and though I never killed any squirrels, I did like shooting almost too much, enough so that I figured I’d never want to own any guns with my “hair trigger temper” of the time.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
@baldmike2004 - I’d forgotten about darts. I never enjoyed playing much, but scored high anyway.
I’m not good at pool, really. Suck at archery (very, very good with guns, though, of any size/variety) and chess… I like the game, but I dunno why I don’t play well. I should… but I don’t. ::shrugs::
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