Chess Club

Nimue's school lets out the kids third grade and under out at 12:45 every Friday. I hate this, as it leaves me such a short block of time free compared to the rest of the week. Fortunately, if you are on the ball, there are a number of after-school activities throughout the year that one can sign up for, conveniently scheduled to fill in the gap on those early dismissal Fridays.

For the last couple of months, this was a science program about space and rockets, which Nimue naturally had a lot of enthusiasm for, given that she's been obsessed by space since about the age of three. Alas, that ended at the end of March.

Several weeks ago, Nimue came home with a piece of paper advertising the next session of activities: Friday afternoon chess club. Despite the fact that I was dubious about it (I personally find chess to be tedious, and was worried about Nimue getting frustrated and thus having howling fits), I decided to sign her up anyway because she seemed really excited about the idea. And as I already mentioned, it gets around the early dismissal problem.

The information sheet said that there were 100 spots that would be filled on a first-come first-served basis starting at 8:15 out by the flagpole in front of the school on one particular day, so I figured I'd just hang out after dropping her off and sign her up. Clearly not a task that should take a long time, right?

Wrong. It's a really good thing that she and I usually ride into school early enough to avoid the nasty traffic mess (we usually get there around 7:55). After locking up the bikes I headed over to the flagpole to find a line of about 35 people already waiting. By the time 8:15 rolled around, there were 120 parents in the line -- more than the open number of spots. For chess club????? Weird. The line moved pretty slowly, and no one gave up after seeing how long the line was, meaning some people were there waiting in that gigantic line for probably at least an hour just to get on the wait list. For chess club??? The mind boggles. I got to the head of the line after about half an hour and was lucky that there were still spots available for her grade level.

I mentioned this to my friend Sarah, and she made a good point: at this age and stage chess club is pretty fun because it is an opportunity to hang out after school and play games with other kids. Particularly for an only kid like Nimue, this is a good thing :) I've been happy to note that the people running it have kept it all pretty non-competitive, at least in the beginner room where Nim is, so it's really all about learning the game and having fun. As Nimue put it: "Who cares who wins? It's fun!" Good girl.

Of course, she comes home and wants to play chess here too, but happily, Chad is quite willing to sit down and play with her once in a while. (I'll play Scrabble, or one of the rail games, or any number of card games instead.)