Earlier today I stumbled upon The Kings of New York by Michael Weiner, a great story about the nation's #1 high school chess team made up of troubled kids at a public school in Canarsie. One quick note: flipping to the acknowldgements I read someone telling a story of the great Bobby Fischer walking in and pulverizing a young hot shot in a few moves using a bit of a trick - he didn't mention, and the kid didn't even notice that Fischer had his King in check. I never realized you could even do that, I always assumed you had to announce "check!" every time. ME!!! Misinformed about something!!!!!!
A few years back I was a substitute teaching at a special ed school out in the Rockaways. Mostly grown-up crack babies, many violent, these kids were pretty fucked up. They weren't sitting around reading Madeline L'Engle if you know what I mean. One day I found myself at the end of the day with a class of 11 year olds. Most of the class were kinda good kids, so I gave them the period off to play quietly and just hang out. Your tax dollars at work. Anyway, one kid named Shareef asked me to play chess with him. We had started playing every once in a while, mostly me explaining over and over how the pieces moved til he'd get frustrated and quit/scream at me, or until another fight broke out and I'd hafta shut the class down. I set the board up, and reviewed what the pieces did and we began. I'd make a move, then it'd be like "Jermaine, sit down! Shaniqua shut up! Why is Neil Diamond here?!!?" etc etc, not really paying attention. I'd glance at the board after he'd move, make a move and then get back to screaming at children. No big whoop. All of a sudden I looked down and realized....oh, shit. This kid was a few moves away from beating me. While not paying attention, I had opened myself up to getting beat by this 11 year old special needs kid. Holy shit.
I thought for a minute. On one hand, I could go ahead with the game, and give the kid a real thrill by beating me. Give him a little ray of light in his unbelievably dark world, give him something to talk and think about. A tiny tiny slice of hope, even if only for a short while. As his teacher, wasn't that my real job anyway? You can get out of here, you are capable of doing great things, etc etc?
Of couse I decided upon another direction: I stalled for a few seconds and waited for the inevitable. It came - a mild outburst from across the room, some yelling/slapping etc that I normally wouldn't have even noticed in a class like that.
"THAT'S IT!!!" I yell jumping up from my seat, pretending to look furious. "That's IT!! Everyone back in their seats, free time is over!! And dammit Shareef, put away that chess board, the game's over!!" and huffed off to the front of the room acting pissed. What. a. fucking. douche.
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