Curtis' Rules

Last week Curtis spent a few days with my parents. Here is my Dad's transcriptions of his experience playing games with Curtis.

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I thought I'd talk about Curtis, you know, our one and only grandson who is almost 5 years old. He answers to Curter, Bud, Buddy, Junior, even Curtis.

We had him for a few days prior to Christmas and I must say, the kid has an addiction to TV. He watched a DVD of old Tom and Jerry cartoons until he knew them by heart... or at least I thought he did. I managed to get him outside a few times and we played until I got too cold to motate.

He likes to play board games so we did that as he brought each one out to the dining room table. We played Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Backgammon (his way), Checkers (also his way), and Chess (with a totally new twist).

As he set the board with Chess pieces I asked, "Do you know how to play this game?"

"Uh-huh," and then proceeded to set the black pieces on the black spaces and the white pieces on the red spaces and in random order. I've learned to 'go with the flow' because I seldom have a chance to win when playing grandchildren.

Then he rolled the dice! He counted the dies and moved one of the black pieces in some wild motion and placed it on a black square with another black piece!

I had to ask, "How do you play this game?"

"Roll them and count the dots." I did.

"Which one do I move?"

"Anyone." I moved one of my men to another space and all was well.

He tossed the dies and counted the dots and moved a third man onto a preoccupied space. It was now one of those games where there are no rules until he needs a rule to trump anything I do and benefit him. I decided to "try the rule book."

I rolled the dies and counted the dots, six. My bishop was handy so I slipped him to the far side of the board right next to his King.

He straightened up and said, "Good move, Papa. Now let's go play some ball."