What the hell is Foresight?

There’s a giant chessboard, complete with movable chess pieces, at the mall near my house. I never really paid any attention to it whenever I went to the mall, but one day I decided to watch whatever went on there.

A match was going on between a youngish-looking guy and a middle-aged-looking guy, and since both of them still had all of their pieces, save for a pawn on both sides, I assumed they were just getting warmed up. Now I’m not good at chess, never was and never will be, and I had a hard time following the game. I’d try to predict the next set of moves in my head, but was constantly surprised when the both of them would do something I never would have thought of. Clueless as I was, I kept on watching.

Trying to figure out the game made me remember a time I played against my dad. I was only in grade school and I was playing white. To me, chess was just a game I played with my cousins and the most I could do with it was to move my pawns to form pretty formations across the board. The concept of strategy was lost on me.

I opened with some random pawn, moving it a square forward. My dad, eager to impart chess knowledge asked me why I did that. I just gave him a clueless look. What did he mean by that? Isn’t moving a pawn just for the sake of moving it sufficient reason? I mean it’s just the start of the game, chesspeople blood was yet to be spilled in a great massacre. In the world of chess, apparently, every move meant something. My dad just smirked and let my ignorance go. He proceeded to checkmate me in a few turns.

If this were an inspirational type of story, I’d be writing about more chess games with my dad, how we bonded over these games, and how he taught me the basics of life with those 32 black and white pieces. Unfortunately, I write self-centered incoherencies, and aside from that one game, I don’t have any vivid memories of playing chess against my dad. So yeah, no “Chicken Soup for the Soul” material here. The above paragraph is simply there to show how much of a chess idiot I am.

Flash forward to the present and the two guys are left only with their queens and a few pawns in play. Younger guy took his time, probably thinking of ways to pin down his opponent. Older guy almost always made a move right after younger person was done. After a few more moves, they paused for a second, then started putting all the pieces back to their starting position. People who were watching were nodding and congratulating the players, saying it was a good game. I think I was the only idiot wondering what the hell happened. I never knew if somebody won, or if it was a stalemate. By the time the players had put back all the pieces, I just felt really, really stupid.