When Life Imitates Chess

Yesternight, I found myself at a public locale. An unusual place for myself to venture. I have become quite weary of man in recent years, and try to avoid social functions at all costs. This is why I have invested my life into the beautifully logical, and mathematical game of Chess. Two traits that the common man just does not possess. 

However, the previous day's gathering was unavoidable, and my attendance therefore necessary. It has been years since I've made conversation with another. What I began to notice is extraordinary. Upon speaking to a person, I would notice they would visually (at least in my head) shift to a Chess piece that represents their personality. As most attendees were common man, naturally they took the shape of pawns. However, in rarity there were certain individuals who would shift into Bishops, Knights, Rooks, and even Kings or Queens, depending on their level of sophistication. 

Former World Champion, Garry Kasparov wrote "How life imitates Chess". Has anybody else had this experience, where they begin to see real life people as Chess figures? Or does my experience suggest an abnormal obsession with Chess? 

Don't be quick to underestimate others or overestimate yourself.

One year, I had had an exhausting school year as a high school teacher and sports coach and decided I needed to get away from it all for a couple July weeks and drive from my East Coast home west a couple thousand miles (3000 km) toward Yellowstone National Park and points in between with no hotel reservations, etc.

I ended up staying at the Range Riders Lodge in Silvergate, Montana just outside the NE Entrance to Yellowstone.  It is (or was) a bar/restaurant/lodge with country music that included songs with lines like (true, I swear), "Emptying our glasses and kicking cowboys' asses, in Silvergate, Montana USA."

I did not expect much enlightened discussions at the bar and tried to restrict it to log cabin construction, horse riding, arrowhead types, etc.

I said to one guy, "I saw you this morning leading a party on horseback. Have you done that job long?"

"Several years," he grinned, "Tell me, do you teach TAG kids in your science classes?"

I wondered how this obvious hick even knew the term "TAG" (Talented and Gifted).

When I replied, "Yes," he went on, "I used to teach high school TAG biology in Texas."

My estimation of the man rose significantly, but it went up more after he continued, "I went on to get a Ph.D. in Veterinary Medicine. Then my son got a job with this horse riding company and I became their full-time Vet."

Another "hick" at the bar asked me if I lived anywhere near Timonium, Maryland where there was a company for which he subcontracted. I told him it was on the other side of Baltimore from my home and asked him, "Did you build log cabins for them?"

"No," he replied, "Missile silos," as in Nuclear Intercontinental Missile Silos!

Ever since, I never assume anyone I meet is an idiot until they prove it!

Intersting story Mick. What Chess piece would you describe these two fellows as? 

Is this some colloquial term for psychedelics?

I have not yet dwelled into his literature. Do you recommend his works? 

....how about....when life irritates chess ?

How does one make such an observation? 

Almost. One day I was immersed in studying chess in the library for hours, and while I was walking out a couple with a young girl were walking out through the narrow, sensor-monitored exit immediately ahead of me. I was in a hurry, and had to make a quick decision of whether to take the chance of them stalling in the exit, or take the other exit and get out without hassle even though it was farther away. I realized it was a chess-like decision of trading off time for certainty by my choice of piece route, myself being the piece and they being the pawns who could block my open line. I decided to follow behind the family since surely they wouldn't stop right at that moment in the exit. But sure enough, the stupid girl decided to choose the very moment she was in the narrow passage to stop suddenly, which then immediately caused her parents to stop in the passage, as well, thereby blocking me and everyone behind them completely. Irritated, I had to stall, then walk over to the unobstructed exit, lamenting how I had unnecesssarily given my "opponent" counterplay and lost tempi.

Under elegant glass cases, fixed by copper rivets, were classed and labelled the most precious productions of the sea which had ever been presented to the eye of the naturalist. My delight as a professor may be conceived.

The division containing the zoophytes presented the most curious specimens of the two groups of polypi and echinodermes. In the first group, the tubipores, were gorgones arranged like a fan, soft sponges of Syria, ises of the Moluccas, pennatules, and admirable virgularia of the Norwegian seas, variegated umbellulairae, alcyonariae, a whole series of madrepores, which my master Milne Edwards has so cleverly classified, amongst which I remarked some wonderful flabellinae, oculinae of the Island of Bourbon, the "Neptune's car" of the Antilles, superb varieties of corals, in short, every species of those curious polypi of which entire islands are formed, which will one day become continents. Of the echinodermes, remarkable for their coating of spines, asteri, sea-stars, pantacrinae, comatules, asterophons, echini, holothuri, etc., represented individually a complete collection of this group.

A somewhat nervous conchyliologist would certainly have fainted before
other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of
molluscs. It was a collection of inestimable value, which time fails me to
describe minutely. Amongst these specimens, I will quote from memory only the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, whose regular white spots stood out brightly on a red and brown ground, an imperial spondyle, bright-coloured, bristling with spines, a rare specimen in the European museums--(I estimated its value at not less than L1000); a common hammer-fish of the seas of New Holland, which is only procured with difficulty; exotic buccardia of Senegal; fragile white bivalve shells, which a breath might shatter like a soap-bubble; several varieties of the
aspirgillum of Java, a kind of calcareous tube, edged with leafy folds, and
much debated by amateurs; a whole series of trochi, some a greenish-yellow, found in the American seas, others a reddish-brown, natives of Australian waters; others from the Gulf of Mexico, remarkable for their imbricated shell; stellari found in the Southern Seas; and last, rarest of all, the magnificent spur of New Zealand; and every description of delicate and fragile shells to which science has given appropriate names.

Apart, in separate compartments, were spread out chaplets of pearls of
the greatest beauty, which reflected the electric light in little sparks of
fire; pink pearls, torn from the pinna-marina of the Red Sea; green pearls
of the haliotyde iris; yellow, blue, and black pearls, the curious productions of inestimable value which had been gathered from the rarest pintadines. Some of these pearls were larger than a pigeon's egg, and were worth as much, and more than that which the traveller Tavernier sold to the Shah of Persia for three millions, and surpassed the one in the possession of the Imaum of Muscat, which I had believed to be unrivalled in the world.

Well written Sqod. You clearly have a talent for the literary. 

Either talent or plagiarism from Verne's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

I would argue that either works in the context. But I have never been one to win any debate about grammar or spelling. Either way, thanks for the edit. 

I'm sorry to hear that Sqod. You had me fooled, I was sure it was your own original work. But I just should have been skeptical about the speed in which you wrote it. 

Speed is no indicator, for many good authors are incredibly speedy as well. 

....Professor !!....

Thanks, for giving, a Not insubstantial boost, to the 2 'members', {if I counted right}, non-fiction, literary talent; Who helped make my day .. by broadening, my, {a-hem}, somewhat shocking, sheltered horizons, for a sextagenerian !

Well, I thought the original post was quite well written. 

My first paragraph is original and true. All else was a paste of decidedly specious origin, motivated by one peculiar polyp of unequivocal persuasive skill, inauspiciously placed before me as an oculina of the Island of Bourbon, who ephemerally impaired the better judgment of this esteemed professor [the reader will notice what pains I took to speak Verne's tongue].

Along with people, chess pieces can also be used to symbolize forum topics.

And, for the record, i would also consider myself a pawn, much like the one pictured above, only with a knight or rook in the mirror -- i'm delusional, but not that delusional. 

 Yes, Charlotte Bronte wrote that book.