After reading a book that talked about the benefits of chess for girls and the exponentially higher likelihood of them playing if they see their mom playing, and latently wanting (as I have for years) to be good enough at chess to respectably beat a respectable player... I told DH that I wanted to start playing chess with him. Regularly. I think he didn't believe me at first, but he likes chess, so he agreed. He beat me the first game. I beat him the second. He's beat me ever since. But I would like the record to show that I have had him on the run a number of times and my losses have been ever closer to wins.
We're balancing out the exercises in strategic thinking (and me practicing looking for the holes in my moves) with exercises in creative thinking, i.e., Scrabble. We've only played it twice and I've beat DH twice, but with ever closer margins. He very nearly had me the last time. Of course, there's more luck with Scrabble than with chess. But it's more my forte, so it balances out his forte with chess, so I'm hoping that in the cosmic scheme of things, we're both helping each other become better balanced people.
I've noticed, though, that I have this default expectation that DH is better at chess than I am because he's a boy. A man. And boys and men are good at chess and girls and women aren't, generally. And when I beat him that one time... it was odd, but I had the sense that I'd "beaten him at his own game", or gotten away with something, or... something. Still trying to put words to the feeling. But I don't like that I have this default reaction, because I know that a large part of the phenomenon is that boys are expected to be better at chess and are more encouraged to practice chess-like thinking (and play chess) than girls, so it's really a self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling thing. And I'm feeling all iconoclastic and wanting to totally upset this institution and prove that girls can be just as good at chess as boys.
So I'm practicing my chess skills.
