Romancing the stones

Whilst waywardly wandering the main street of Manitou Springs last Saturday I and a young lady who is rather shy in public and therefore not quite on my arm found a hidden wine bar neither of us previously knew existed down an obscure side street.

The table in front of the couch we selected had a chest full of several games I'd never heard of and a few I hadn't played in decades. My lady friend, who apparently was short of real entertainment growing up in small town Minnesota, knew them all and selected one whose name I forget to teach me.

It involved moving a series of stones around under a set of rules that were not terribly complex but whose somewhat subtle implications both appealed to her math teacher soul and somewhat eluded me, slightly inebriated as I was on wine and her eyes. I was shellacked on the first game and did little better on the second.

But! Lo! A famous victory of great proportions on the third. "You're a fast learner," she allowed, with equal parts admiration and exasperation. And yea, verily, I won also the fourth game, notwithstanding her new focus.

This brought us to a moment of crisis and conversation. Could we accept a tie? Kissing sisters wasn't what either of us was looking for in this relationship. Could her oh-so-slowly budding affection for me survive such a swift reversal of fortunes at the hands of a tyro? That was never quite answered. Should I throw the game in a desperate attempt to avoid finding out? Absolutely not, we both agreed, with me remembering and almost being foolish enough to fully explain the great apologetic love letter in A Civil Campaign inspired by just such a mistake.

Battle was joined, with neither side giving quarter. It was the best yet, with no one giving away cheap points, and each of us cleverly earning some unavoidably painful gains at the other's expense. But, disaster(!?) as I finished with a clearly larger pile of stones and tried to gauge by the look in her eyes how to spin this unfortunate victory into a less damaging move in the greater game we were playing.

I needn't have bothered. Her eyes were downcast; not because she was upset, but because she knew that bigger wasn't always better. She patiently counted out the irregularly-shaped stones to find romantic reversal in their final sum: she'd beaten me by a single stone.

She's shy in public, so my triumphant defeat couldn't be celebrated immediately. Fortunately, the stone paved street outside was both deserted and heavily shadowed.