Clever Cheater

My nephew Jeff is five and he’s learned to cheat. Five year olds are able to play games with specific rules. They are capable of understanding the difference of winning and losing a game. And Jeff is quite keen on winning.

In Turkey, backgammon is a national sport. You’ll see herds of old men huddled around the backgammon board, lost in clouds of cigarette smoke, banging the wooden pieces loudy as they move them. These people know the special names for the special dice combinations that are considered good throws in the game. Occasionally, one of them will be overcome with anger and rise from his chair, raising his fist at the other player and uttering words that the kids playing in close proximity should not be privvy to. It will take two to three men to calm the fuming player and within minutes no one will remember the ugly occurence.

At the resort we stayed, backgammon boards were plenty. Jeff, too young to understand how to play the real game, taught my mom the popular children’s version. Backgammon pieces, for those of you deprived souls who’ve never seen them, are generally wooden and circular. There are fifteen pieces of one color, often while or light wood, and fifteen of the other, often black. The kids’ game consists of using your index finger to flip your piece so it lands on top of a piece with the opposite color. If your piece balances on top of the other one, you get the take the other piece away. The person who gives up all his/her pieces, loses. Pretty simple game and quite a bit of fun even though the pieces are hard to flip. The only additional rule is that if a piece goes off the board, you put it on the edge closest to where it flew out of. This game has been played by kids for as long as I can remember and the rules have always been the same.

Not for Jeff. As he started playing the game with my mom, he decided to change stuff around a bit. He claimed, “If my piece touches your piece, I get to take your piece even if my piece doesn’t end up on top of yours.” My mom didn’t know the game and so was willing to take his word for it when I clatified the situation much to the dismay of Jeff whose piece had “touched” three of my mom’s pieces. I also taught him the rule of what happens when a piece flies off the board. He decided to interpret the rule in ways that fit his game. Instead of putting the piece in the corner where it flew out of, he’d place it in a corner right above where one of my mom’s pieces stood so that with one tiny flicker of his finger, it would easily rest on my mom’s piece. When my mom asked him why he picked that particular corner, he’d say, “No reason,” attempting to put on a look of 100% innocence.

In moments where my mom was distracted and looking elsewhere, he’d seize the opportunity and put his piece on top of hers or grab her piece as if he rightfully deserved it. If my mom caught him, he’d smile sheepishly and put it back where it was. He never apologized and there was no shame in his face. Only amusement.

In the rare moments where the game turned around and my mom appeared to be winning, he’d get increasingly agitated and close the board with a loud bang instead of letting the game take its inevitable end. Losing was not an option.

I wonder how a five-year-old learns that winning is all that matters, even if you must cheat. Maybe it’s from growing up around the old guys who think a board game is worth starting a fight over.