I hadn’t played checkers in at least 30 year when Louisa mentioned at the dinner table that her friends were surprised she didn’t know how to play checkers. WHAT?! I had failed in making my daughter culturally literate! W-A-A-A-H!
Time to play checkers . . . immediately!
Thus began regular checkers games—whenever we’re in the mood—that has stretched our brains, relieved stress, and given us something fun to do at the end of the day. And we’re actually getting good at it!
What I’ve learned from checkers:
- take turns
- going first is not always the best thing to do
- watch your back
- slow down and take a careful look before making decisions
- things are not as they appear to be
- patience
- kings can do anything
- watch out for those who have too much power
- preventing someone from getting too much power is a lot easier than dealing with them once they have it
- it’s not over until it’s over
- risk taking gets you in trouble
- keep hope—even the most dire situation can turn around
Now I understand why the general stores across the frontier in early America all had a checkerboard game on the cracker barrell next to the pot-bellied stove. It’s good for us!
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Great post! We've recently started playing chess again in our home – for some reason we had put the chessboard aside and kinda forgot about it – but it's so fun to play again and have that family time. But I do want to get checkers out, too – the younger kids are somewhat left out of chess, and checkers would be just the thing to include them in game time. Thanks for the reminder!
It's been a LONG time since I've played checkers…hmmm, I think I have them around here somewhere…