Glue Lesson 101

Earlier today I was sitting on my parent’s plaid couch staring at their marble chess board. Every time I look at it, I reminisce back to the days of when trouble always found my best friend JJ, now called Jul or Julia, and myself. Often times we blame shifted my younger sister, and that worked okay until it was time for JJ to go home, then I would get in trouble.

Well, I remember my mother got a new piece of fancy décor for our formal living room in Pennsylvania. We were instructed multiple times not to touch it; it was marble and very expensive. That made it all the more enticing; what’s the big deal we thought? It’s just green and white and as we tried to pick it up… we discovered it was REALLY heavy too! Bad idea! You see all the pieces fell and hit the glass top coffee table… As we assembled the pieces back ALL over the board as we clearly thought they went, we took a deep breath of relief as we noticed we didn’t break anything… And mom didn’t even yell about the loud noise (probably because she was working out in our basement, saved by the grace of a great wood door!)


Then I realized… Oh No! Shoot!! One of the pieces was beheaded-- we searched high and low… There it was the head of a Queen. As I look to Julia with mass confusion and utter panic, she yells “we need to find glue NOW!” She was always the thinker behind how we are going to get out of messes at my house, and I played the same role at hers. Smart plan… Elmer’s saved the day… or so we thought, until we heard mom yell for us a few hours later… Dang it, hot orange Elmer’s arts and crafts glue doesn’t dry clear! Why did nobody explain to us the difference in orange, pink, yellow and white glue?! To this day, I am still not sure why nobody cared to give us glue lesson 101.


Thinking back on this eventful day made me ponder that perhaps a difference in men and women can best be explained by this classy game of chess. The queen is essentially more valuable than the king as she knows how to work her way around the game any which way she chooses and is able to change her direction at any time (as long as its her turn). However, the opposing player only actively seeks the queen in order to pursue the king and win the game. Still, the king can only make one move at a time, and eventually they get cornered… often by the other queen. [Side note: I do understand there are other pieces, and sometimes it’s another figure that comes into play unexpectedly and becomes your magic move; the difference between you experiencing victory or total defeat. Though that figure could be in the form of anything from a knight to a pawn; I call him my Abracadabra.] The rules are the rules; you can break them, but don’t try to change them. If you changed the rules, you change the game entirely and chess no longer exists.


Same holds true in the relationship, once you try to change somebody, it’s doomed. Neither one will budge even one inch. It’s kind of like the fat on my thighs—I can work out all the time and be so toned all over, but the weight never comes off my legs. It’s depressing really.


Speaking of depressing-- realizing every relationship has to come face to face with the law of diminishing returns; the point when every little thing that you once loved converts into an awful liability. The upside is learning how to be happy overlooking imperfections, and choosing not to love them under a faulty stipulation that they change a bad habit you don’t care for, or suddenly start a new routine. Its best left alone. Learn to love it or move on.

Don’t try to change the rules. It’s easier to pretend a hot orange necklace doesn’t surround the neck of my mother’s white marble chess queen!