The best strategic decision maker in the family

Take it like a Man
By Rick Spruill
My wife: my best strategic decision.
Posted September 30, 2008

I learned the manly art of Chess as a boy. I’ve never been very good at it.

All those funny looking pieces with incongruous names. “Knight”, “Bishop”, “Rook”, “Pawn”….or, as I so often referred to them: “Horse Guy”, “Pointy-Headed Guy”, “Tower Guy”, and “Pawn” (that one was easy to remember).

In any event, I’ve always been a Chess aficianado, even if my skills leave much to be desired. My Math-freak buddy, the one I’ve mentioned in previous posts, schooled me on many occasions.

I once made the mistake of bringing a portable chess set on a mission trip to Germany with him. And, as he desribed it, I went “Oh-for-Germany” in terms of Wins/Losses over those 21 days (which, incidentally, matched his record in terms of girls who gave him the time of day over the same span). As a matter of fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever bested him that he didn’t let me do it, the Bobby Fisher-wannabe freak.

But, even though Chess may have claimed it’s share of my pride through the years, I took from Chess a wealth of wisdom.

In a nutshell, through the game of Chess I learned to think more than two moves ahead in nearly every situation, a skill that served me very well in that other manly, yet so often brutally unforgiving, game: Courtship.

Oh, man. Did thinking more than than two moves ahead come in handy for that. Actually, let’s rewind a few years, when I was thinking ahead, but in far more limited terms.

Ah, yes, the college years. In those days, I was pretty good at “tactics”. I had skills. I could close with and engage a female. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost. Overall strategy? I had none. Strategy was for graduate student-level relationships.

And then, nearly a decade removed from my winsome college days, I met Kelly, my wife. And in her I found I’d met my match in terms of tactical maneuvering. I’m not kidding. It was ugly.

She absolutely owned me. I was the Pawn. She was the Queen. Nowhere to run, baby. Nowhere to hide.

But, fortunately for me, my Chess skills kicked in. I eased up on the tactics, and developed a clear strategy. As a result, I knew when to “go to guns” so to speak, and when to bug out and head for the bomb shelter. You see? I was thinking more than two steps ahead.

Here is the full article.