The Lewis Flush

No doubt that impulse has at least on occasion gone flitting through our minds.

Still, I once went 0-4 in an OTB tourney and I didn't chuck it. Well okay, maybe in the sense of hurling...but I kept my USCF membership card (and everything else) intact.

Not Lewis though.

He was a high-school teammate of mine and whenever OTB disaster struck in sufficient quantities he would immediately head to the nearest john and take the offending USCF card out of his wallet, tearing it into itty bitty (and absolutely furious!) little pieces--and then of course came the eponymous trip down the loo.

This was the whole purgative business at its most basic: the Lewis Flush. He resorted to it several times (while USCF kept on furnishing him with replacement cards--amazing!).

On a couple especially bitter occasions though it was time for phase two: the Lewis Flush With Full Listing.

That being a compendium of all chess-related materials in his possession (though obviously you couldn't say that he was feeling terribly possessive at the moment). He would actually xerox this whole big handwritten thing off (back when that still generally involved making a trip somewhere) and hand it around to any and all prospective customers.

Okay, mainly that was all of us at the club. And I don't mean to make it sound like the guy was totally bonkers. He was actually a pretty successful player for the most part...only every once in a while he would get on a down streak (no doubt accelerated by his somewhat hit and miss style) and then all that frustration and rage would come to the surface.

A typical conversation of ours on the Futility Of Chess occurred early one Saturday morning when we were embarking on a trip to the Hayward Chess Festival (or as we had already dubbed it, the Haywire Festering).

"What do we do this for?"

"I mean, really."

"We have to get up at seven o'clock on a weekend--both days. And we keep hoping we're going to win money but it doesn't happen."

"And meanwhile you have to keep paying entry fees."

He laughed. "Yeah right."

Of course, he always did come back to play (as did I). And he never actually did end up selling any of his stuff either. :) And meanwhile "Lewis Flush" became for the rest of us a humorous reference to that perversely compelling urge to chuck it all.

Many years later I was playing in a tournament which was held in a small bookstore. As a result of which everybody was crowded in pretty close together.

All of the sudden everyone left in the tournament hall--or alcove (and there were still a couple games going on)--heard this anguished wail coming from somewhere: "I KEEP GETTING GOOD POSITIONS AND BUILDING UP ATTACKS AND DOUBLING HIS PAWNS BUT THEN I CAN'T STOP FROM HANGING MY #*#(#@#@#*(# PIECES!!!..."

Well okay, there was actually a lot more cussing in there. :)

Anyway, I figure that guy--whoever he was--spoke for all of us who've ever dropped anything, overlooked anything, fallen into anything and walked right into something.

And incidentally, that next round I managed somehow to blow a basic drawn endgame and went from being tied for the lead to winning no money at all.

Briefly, I remember feeling for my wallet... ;)