A Safe Cheat

On the way home tonight Aidan was watching "Bear in the Big Blue House" in the car. On the show they were playing checkers. He's never seen checkers and asked if we had some. We said yes and agreed to show him how to play when we got home. Once home, we got the checkers out, which took some doing because we haven't had any games out in quite a while and even then I don't think we played checkers.

At first Jason tried to show him how to play by playing against him. That didn't work. I offered to play Jason so that Aidan could watch and both felt like that would be a good method, so we started playing. Aidan was enjoying the game until I took one of their checkers. Then he got a weird look on his face and was concerned. When he realized that I could just take their guys by jumping them and that this could mean that I'd win, he started taking my checkers off the board! He was cheating!

It was interesting to me to observe my own competitiveness about it. Sure, it's just a game and it's only purpose was to demonstrate the game to Aidan, but I still was feeling very competitive with Jason because, well, let's face it. Jason and I are always competitive. So this one time when Jason probably would have let me win, Aidan stole my checkers right out from under my nose, literally.

In other news, Aidan and his friend from next door were going outside to "sword fight" (which consists of two plastic baseball bats and a plastic broom). Aidan insisted that they go to the front yard and was resisting going in the backyard even though everyone, including his friend, was saying otherwise. When we finally talked him into going to the backyard to play, he revealed that the backyard needed to be cleaned up. He simply didn't feel it was safe to sword fight in the backyard when there were balls and toys all over. He said they might fall and hurt themselves. My adorable little boy is putting safety first. What a sweet little guy!