The Chess Match: Part 4

Dinner was the normal crazy affair at my house.  Not that everyone was going in different places, no.  In fact one of the things that my mom really insisted upon was being at dinner at the same time.  Dinner was crazy because you had 5 boys talking about what they did during the day at the same time.  Mom and Dad enjoyed the chaos.  I never realized just how much fun it was until my wife and I had four kids of our own.  Usually I was in on the conversation.  Most of the time I was involved in trying to correct all the erroneous views of my clod-head brothers who didn’t seem to know anything, well that is until I reached 18 when for some strange reason all of them and my parents suddenly became smart.

This night was different.  Even with the decibel level pretty high around the dinner table I couldn’t get Lisa off my mind.  It was strange.  I didn’t know her.  I had never seen her.  I didn’t know the first thing about her, other than she was a girl and evidently a pretty good chess player and for some strange reason she was all I thought about during dinner.  Farah Fawcette I could understand.  I knew what she looked like. But Lisa Fridell?  It didn’t make sense.

I dragged myself out of bed the next morning and got ready for school still confused about “Lisa”.  The bus pulled up and I took my usual seat next to Tony.  The confused look on my face must have been noticeable.

“Trying to figure out two plus two?” he asked with a wry smile.

“Yea, you could do it too.  You won’t even need your left hand.”

“Ha. Ha.” Came back the fake laugh.

“No, I have been thinking about Lisa.”

“Lisa Reed?” he asked with an enthusiasm I didn’t expect, “She’s pretty hot isn’t she.”

“No! I haven’t been thinking of her, though you obviously have.” I said as I stared at him.  There was a few seconds of silence as Tony turned beet red.  “no.. I was thinking about Lisa Fridell.  You know.  The one I am playing in the chess championship in two days.”

“Yea, she pretty high on the looker list too.” He answered but not with the same gusto as before. “I thought you didn’t know her!?.”

“I don’t.  That is what I don’t understand.  I don’t know the girl.  Heck! I’ve never even seen a picture of her but I can’t get her out of my mind.”

“So you got the hots for a girl you’ve never even seen.”

“No, no, no!” I answered.  Tony didn’t get it.  “No I don’t ‘the hots’ for her.  I just can’t get her or this chess match out of my mind.  More specifically I can’t get what Whiteside said out of my mind.”  I rubbed my chin with my hand as I stared at the floor.

I turned to Tony. “Is she really that smart, Tony?  Am I really going to be toast?”

“I don’t know.  I mean she is pretty smart but you don’t belong to Idiots Anonymous yourself.”

“Thanks, but I am a little worried.”

“Worried!? Worried about what?”

“Losing.  I don’t want to lose.”

“Well nobody wants to lose.”

“Yea but its so….. so… so embarrassing.  People will think I am an idiot.  I don’t want to walk around CHS being known as the village idiot.”

“I don’t know what planet you live on but nobody around here is going to think of you as the village idiot.”  He answered with a look of disbelief   “What is the worse that is going to happen to you.  They will announce that Lisa won the match on the P.A. in the morning. Ninety percent of the school won’t even know you were the opponent.  Then when the bell rings 30 seconds later and everyone head to class they won’t even remember that Lisa won the stupid chess championship.  I mean chess doesn’t quite have the sex appeal of football around her and you don’t have the notoriety of coach Bass.”

While Tony seemed to have a good head on his shoulders somehow I missed internalizing his perspective.  There was a gnawing fear growing in me about her and, ever since Tony’s evaluation of her, a strange fascination about her.  “Who was Lisa?”  Was she Goliath, Farah Fawcette or both?’ I thought.

Apparently the news of the match had gotten around the previous day.  Kim Stephens, possibly the strongest sophomore in the school, some say he could bench 500lbs, walked up to me.  “I hear you are playing Lisa Fridell for the chess championship.”

“Yes.” I responded a little suspiciously.

“Sorry to hear it.”  He said.  “I like you and I was hoping you would win.”

I actually got mad at this comment.  The anger boiled up within me and I was about to give him a piece of my mind before common sense took over and I realized that he could easily take piece of my body as well as my mind.

“Thanks.” I said not really knowing how to answer him.

The rest of the day was filled with comments like that from friends, acquaintances and some people I didn’t even know.  By now I was wondering if Lisa was Albert Einstein’s granddaughter.  It was last period, the infamous study hall, and I walked to the library where Tony and I usually tried to catch up on current events in the news papers, like Garfield and Bloom County.

I didn’t do much reading this time.

“What is this?” I thought to myself.  “Everyone seems to think I will lose.  Before this week I bet 80 percent of this school didn’t even know how to play chess and now everyone is an expert?”  As my day dream wondered the image of Lisa began to grow in my mind.  She was now nine feet tall, wearing armor and carrying a spear about the size of a pine tree.  She really did resemble my mental image of Goliath, though the face was blank.  I couldn’t seem to come up with a good one to put there.

“Hey, are you going to stay here all night or what?”  Tony asked as if he had asked this question many times before.

“What?” I asked as I was startled out of my pity party “What?”  I quickly pulled out my pocket watch.  3:13pm.  The bus would be here in less than two minutes.  “Ahh !”  I yelled forgetting to thank Tony.  Quickly I grabbed my bag and ran out to the stop hoping to get there before the bus left.  Tony sauntered behind.

We got to the stop, the bus was there but hadn’t left yet.  “Thanks Tony.”  I said as I climbed aboard.

“Sure, no problem.  Somebody has to watch out for you.  Your bright but you’d forget your head if it weren’t attached to your body.”  He chuckled.  I would have been offended if I didn’t know it was true.  I was an airhead.  The real problem is its still true.

“You still pondering Lisa?” he asked.

“You mean Goliath?” I answered still in half daydream/day-nightmare.

“Tony?” I asked  “What is she like?  I keep thinking about this match and my image of her always comes up blank.  I need to have some idea of what she is like so I won’t go crazy.”

“Lisa?”

“Yea”

“Well I don’t know her very well.”

“You know her better than I do.”

“She’s short, uh.. brunette.   with glasses.  Pretty attractive.”

“No, I mean what is she like.”

“She’s smart, as you have heard. Frankly I don’t know much else.”

“You’re not much help, other than to let me know she is cute.”  I spent the rest of the bus ride home trying to put together an image of Goliath, Einstien and Farah Fawcette.  It wasn’t real easy.

Dinner at home was normal.  Hectic, lots of talking and mom not putting up with our rude table manners.  Dad asked how the day was an everyone of the boys took there turn.  Robert was in Med school trying to set a record for the most number of days without sleep.  Philip was home that weekend from college in Chicago.  He had gone to visit his old friend, John O’kelley to watch an Atlanta Falcons game.  As usual they lost.  Stuart as usual had three dates that weekend.  Fortunately later in life he would marry the one good one from the pack.  I didn’t need to know about Sam, my younger brother.  I was at his soccer game the previous Saturday.  He spent the entire game terrorizing every other player.  He was the kind of player you hated to play against but you loved to have him on your team.  The only problem was that he wasn’t all that great at controlling his temper.

At one point during the game the ref pulled him aside to give him a yellow card.  Sam’s diplomatic response was to say, “That’s OK I’ve gotten plenty of those before.”

At which point the ref asked, “Have you gotten one of these before?” as he pulled a red card out of his pocket.  Sam was shocked and mumbled as he walked off the field.  The coach put his face in his hands and almost pulled his hair out.  That was Sam.

I was pretty quite until Dad asked me how my day was.  I went blank I couldn’t think of one thing that happened.  The only thing that came to mind was the name Lisa Fridell.  I knew Dad would want to hear something but I couldn’t think of anything to say.  Finally the words, “Lisa Fridell” came out of my mouth.  Silverware clanked, food was dropped and heads turned toward me, as my brothers heard a girl’s name come out of my mouth.  I was kind of a late bloomer and hadn’t even gone on a date up to this point in my life.  So to hear me mention girl’s name made my family curious to say the least.  Well, not really my mom and dad, more my brothers, specifically Stuart and Phillip.  It was a mistake of disastrous proportions.

Soon the old brotherly refrain started, “Punky Kid plus Karen Rich.  Punky Kid plus Karen Rich.”  My brothers had made that one up when I was about four and often played with a girl named Karen Rich.  You can guess how I got the name Punky Kid.  It didn’t matter that I had absolutely no memory of Karen Rich.  Had my brothers not sung that song at every chance they got to harass me I wouldn’t have even remembered that there even was a Karen Rich.  Sam even joined in the refrain even though he didn’t even know what the song meant.

Insult to injury.  Not only did my class mates know I was going to lose to Lisa Fridell, now my brothers were going to brand her as my girlfriend forever even though I had never met the girl.

“No! No! No!”, I don’t even know the girl.”

“Yeh right!” said Phillip as he smiled and bit into Mom’s fried chicken, which happen to be exceptional that night.

Stuart looked over at Phillip, “Punky Kid plus Lisa Fridell.  Just doesn’t have a good ring to it.”

“Yeh your right.”  Answered the elder, “Harvey, when you two get married your going to have to get her to change her name to Karen Rich.”  He and Stuart laughed out loud.

I was so mad I almost flung the mashed potatoes at them but the potatoes tasted too good.

“Quiet!” Dad said in his stern voice.  The boys shut up.  “Who is Lisa Fridell?”

“I don’t know her.” I answered as I stared at Stu and Phillip.  “But I am playing her for the chess championship of the school in a couple of days.”

“Fridell?” Dad asked, “Is that her name?”

“Yes.” I answered inquisitively.

“I think I work with her Mom.  She is an RN at the hospital.  In fact she mentioned something about her daughter being excited about a chess match at school the other day.  I didn’t realize it was with you.  I hear she is a pretty bright cookie.”

“bright cookie” was the last thing I needed to hear.  That night I had a dream about her.  (It was NOT the dream that most boys have about girls.)

Lisa was standing in a valley arrayed in her armor.  I think she had grown to 20 feet by now.  She was holding her spear, which now resembled an oak tree.  Her very short squire stood by laughing maniacally.  I didn’t see but sensed the presence of hordes of people on the slopes ready to watch the action.

I stood about 100 yards away from her on the other slope of the valley dressed in my normal school clothes and holding no weapon.

Her loud booming voice could be heard across the entire valley, “Send one man to fight me. If I win he will be my slave.  If he wins….  Well there is no need to be concerned with that.”  She then stared at me with fire in her eyes.  She raised her spear up to her head and began to spring toward me.  She pulled her arm back and was about to release the spear when I awoke.  I was breathing heavy and sweating.  At this point I wish I had never signed up for the tournament.