I probably haven't been dedicating enough of my time to service lately. Balancing work, family, house repairs, and personal life hasn't been easy for me. Every month a new category seems neglected. But dedicating my time to service has been neglected for a while now.
Maybe that's why this Saturday was such a great experience for me. Or maybe it's because Kent was so good at checkers.
I took Sophie to the park on Saturday and while she was climbing and going down slides, an older man approached me in his motorized chair. He asked me if I would like to play checkers with him. Following tradition with most Americans, I was first surprised at this request, then felt a bit uncomfortable and suspicious of the unshaven man. Thoughts quickly went through my head - is he some weirdo? Maybe homeless? Handicapped? I thought I found a reasonable excuse by claiming that my two year old needed to be monitored very closely because you could never know when she was going to fall on her head. The man accepted my excuse and proceeded to ask the next adult he saw on the playground - I could tell that person went through a similar process while making his excuse.
After watching Sophie play on the playground for a few more minutes, I realized she was a pretty flexible girl and would have fun doing anything outside. I was also a little ashamed of my judgement of the older gentleman and my excuse. He couldn't find a checkers partner, but was still waiting patiently at the picnic table.
Sophie and I approached him and introduced ourselves saying I could find time for some checkers. He was noticeably happy, introduced himself as Kent. He laid down the rules - black goes first, and if you have a jump you have to take it. We chatted and got to know each other while playing what I thought was a simple game. He destroyed me the first game; he probably had 8 checkers left after jumping my last checker. I told him he needed to teach me some tricks - then his secret came out: he had written a book on checkers strategy.
He said he had difficulty finding people to play him (they probably aren't too different from me - a little apprehensive about Kent's request to play, passing unfair judgments and dealing with other responsibilities at the park). I told him that they probably recognize him as the author of the bestselling checkers strategy book, at which he laughed.
Kent was a game designer that lived in New York most of his life, developing ~250 games (most of them not getting farther than development - he claimed he wasn't much of a marketer). He never married and recently had a stroke.
The next two games of checkers went better. Kent taught me some strategy as we played and by the last game he only had 2 checkers left at the end. Kent explained how there is very complex strategy to checkers, but most never learn it because they get distracted by the complex pieces and moves in chess.
In case you are wondering what I did with Sophie, she was showing us somersaults, running on the grass, looking at bugs and running down the aisles of picnic tables at the pavillion we were playing at. Kent was impressed with her energy.
I am posting this because I think we should all take more time to do something random and make new friends. Yesterday I never would have guessed that I would be playing checkers in the park with a 75 yr. old man named Kent. That 1/2 hr. I made to play with him, was probably the best thing I've done for myself in the last 3 months.
Now I'm going to go roaming through parks looking for old people to play checkers with.
