This week, I was in the Math and Science room.

I sat down at a table with two girls and one boy. The two girls were playing this game where we had to try to fill the board with colored pieces (similar to tetris pieces) but there weren’t enough pieces, so they just tried to fill one side. Calvin was quietly watching but wanted to join, so I asked the two girls if Calvin and I could join. They agreed, but after one round, they left to play another game. Calvin became more talkative and said that he wanted to play a game that he was sure he could beat me every time because he’s very good at it. He meant Connect 4. Haha. I saw ways to win, but I let him win rounds and even pointed out what he could do to win, to which he responded with “I saw it before you pointed it out!” He then said “Let’s play but we each get 4 turns. I’ll go first!” He promptly puts in 4 pieces in a row.

He then pulls out a chess board with insufficient checker pieces. Calvin wanted me to play chess with him, but we didn’t have enough pieces nor the right pieces; we played anyway. We essentially played checkers, but the pieces moved differently. It showed me that kids don’t care about rules and winning (only sometimes though), but rather they just want to play and interact with others. As an only child, I didn’t really have others to play with; my parents did not understand much English, so explaining the rules to them was difficult. Maybe I should’ve just made up my own rules so I could play with them.