The Lengths I Went To In Order To Get My Chess Set

I love looking at pictures of people's chess sets. This is mine.

This chess set is very special to me because of what I had to go through to get it.

When I started playing again in August, I had to get a chess set, because most of the sets I had in my twenties had long since vanished. All I had left was a small magnetic travel set, which I don't like to play on because it's so small. I looked around the different shops in my area, and all I could find were plastic sets. Very ugly plastic sets. Which I bought, so that I'd have something to play on. But what I really wanted was a wooden set, and I could not find one.

When I went out of town that month to visit friends, I made it my mission to find a wooden chess set. I figured that that would be an easy goal to accomplish since I was travelling to a rather large city many hours away from where I am from. However, it was not as easy as I had thought.

I called around to different shops. I visited different shops. The employees of the shops I visited kept directing me to other shops. I visited 6 shops and none of the 6 carried chess sets. The 7th shop I went to had a plastic set, which I bought because by that point I figured I wasn't going to find a wooden set anywhere. This set was nicer than the plastic set I had bought at home, but it wasn't what I wanted.

The next day, I was at a mall with someone who is very special to me. We passed by a games store, and I figured it would be worth a shot to look inside, even though by then I was convinced that there were no wooden chess sets to be found anywhere in the province.

I was very pleased when Store #8 proved me wrong. On the shelf was a beautiful wooden chess set, very reasonably priced at $14.95. My friend ended up buying it for me as a present, and he played the first game on the set with me, which made it even more special to me. My best friend made the pouch for me, and that's where I keep the pieces.

My chess set lives in my backpack - the board is very light - and my backpack goes with me almost everywhere I go. I love my wooden chess set, and I already have a lot of very nice memories to go with it. I wouldn't trade it for the nicest set in the world.