For the Love of the Game

I learned the game of backgammon at my Pappy's knee. I spent much of my childhood watching him play for some pretty high stakes and then I went on to become the Backgammon Champion of my high school. Okay, that's not all true. You know those icebreaker games where a person shares three "facts" about themselves and everyone guesses which one is false? This is a bit like that.

The truth is, I called my old man Pops, not Pappy, and I never finished high school. I did play in a high-school backgammon tournament before I left, though, and came in… second. Flashback to the third game of the final round—I'm wearing peg-legged jeans and crazy bangs and I'm one roll away from taking home the prize when I'm defeated by Tim Wilkinson and a much-needed roll of doubles. Tim's backgammon career took off after that—I think he won a scholarship to State, but I'm proud to say that I'm still playing in the minors.

Since Tavia had said she wanted to learn to play, I brought in my board and set it up in the conference room today. The board belonged to my Pops before it was mine and as I was summarily beating Dan at a quick game during lunch, I had time to reflect on my history with the smooth men (the pieces are called "men," my history with actual smooth men is a completely different blog post), the dice, the doubling cube, and why I love this game: backgammon is the perfect mix of skill, luck, and bravado. Even the most seasoned player can be beat by a newbie on a lucky streak and a lucky streak can almost always be erased by some well-timed talking of the trash.

A mysterious combination of skill, luck, and bravado carry the day in my writing life as well, as do most of the lessons I learned playing backgammon with my Pops. When he and I played together, he took the game even more seriously than on his gambling nights because, I realize now, the stakes were higher. The prize when we played was raising a confident child. Pops taught me the importance of losing with grace and not being afraid to try again, and more than that, he taught me to roll the dice with a sense of humor and to know that the only next step, win or lose, is to set up the board for the next game.

These lessons help me through those challenging writing moments, which are many, and every backgammon loss, which (need I say it?) are few. I'd love to hear what lessons, learned at your Pappy's knee or on any playing field, help you through your writing wins and losses! Who's up for a game?