Seen in passing
On my most recent drive to Oregon (yes, there have been many), I had two surprises.
The first was outside the car. Traffic slowed to a crawl while I was driving. Lisa caught a glimpse of whirling cop lights to the side of the highway, something on the on-ramp. But traffic hadn't slowed down only because people were craning their necks at an on-ramp accident. Traffic had slowed down because people were surprised to find themselves driving in front of guns.
We passed the mouth of the on-ramp with a shotgun and two pistols pointed our way, though they were pointed through the body of a grizzled white guy in a yellow t-shirt and khaki slacks. He had his hands on his head. He was inching baby-step by baby-step backwards up the on-ramp, away from his open-doored late model van, up towards where three cops with guns were hiding behind the door of a squad car while two motorcycle cops waited twenty or thirty yard back, ready to ride downhill if things went weird. And so we swept by.
The second surprise was calmer. Lisa had her new Macintosh in her lap while I drove. At some point she got tired of working on grants and watching work-related videos so she turned on the Mac's Chess program. She was wearing earphones so I couldn't track what was going on, but it seemed like she played several games, working through many moves. This was odd. I hadn't realized that Lisa played chess. She'd been taught once, years ago, by a nine year old friend, but she hadn't played since, so the fact that she was playing against her new computer was pretty impressive.
I asked about her games when we got home. It turned out that Lisa didn't fully know how to play chess. She was figuring it out by trial-and-error, learning what pieces she could move where by pushing pieces around. She'd held on for long matches after the first couple games when she hadn't been clear whether she was supposed to be protecting the King or the Queen! "I guess that was an extreme case of not reading the directions," says Lisa. I'm going to teach her about castling, but I don't know that there's a whole lot of point showing her en passant.
The first was outside the car. Traffic slowed to a crawl while I was driving. Lisa caught a glimpse of whirling cop lights to the side of the highway, something on the on-ramp. But traffic hadn't slowed down only because people were craning their necks at an on-ramp accident. Traffic had slowed down because people were surprised to find themselves driving in front of guns.
We passed the mouth of the on-ramp with a shotgun and two pistols pointed our way, though they were pointed through the body of a grizzled white guy in a yellow t-shirt and khaki slacks. He had his hands on his head. He was inching baby-step by baby-step backwards up the on-ramp, away from his open-doored late model van, up towards where three cops with guns were hiding behind the door of a squad car while two motorcycle cops waited twenty or thirty yard back, ready to ride downhill if things went weird. And so we swept by.
The second surprise was calmer. Lisa had her new Macintosh in her lap while I drove. At some point she got tired of working on grants and watching work-related videos so she turned on the Mac's Chess program. She was wearing earphones so I couldn't track what was going on, but it seemed like she played several games, working through many moves. This was odd. I hadn't realized that Lisa played chess. She'd been taught once, years ago, by a nine year old friend, but she hadn't played since, so the fact that she was playing against her new computer was pretty impressive.
I asked about her games when we got home. It turned out that Lisa didn't fully know how to play chess. She was figuring it out by trial-and-error, learning what pieces she could move where by pushing pieces around. She'd held on for long matches after the first couple games when she hadn't been clear whether she was supposed to be protecting the King or the Queen! "I guess that was an extreme case of not reading the directions," says Lisa. I'm going to teach her about castling, but I don't know that there's a whole lot of point showing her en passant.