Black Friday shoppers might try simple checkers game

Editor's note: This story was originally published Nov. 27, 2014. 

Black Friday is an ominous name for the day after Thanksgiving. It sounds like the memorial for some sort of war or attack rather than the day millions of people spend money on things they don't need in the name of a merry Christmas.

Right now, hundreds of thousands of people are lined up outside malls and stores in the capital city, across Iowa and throughout the country.

Videos of Black Friday always disturb me. People run inside stores when security opens the doors. Run! Running is something you do for exercise or because there is an emergency. I cannot imagine why someone would run to go shopping.

Sure, maybe you save some money on a new TV or video game system or designer fashions. But I just don't think this rush to buy stuff is particularly effective at making Christmas merry.

The best Christmas present I ever received was a simple checkerboard. I didn't think much of it at the time, casting it aside in favor of toy soldiers and transforming robots. But that checkerboard became so much more important than anything I'd gotten from Santa.

PHOTOS:Snapshots of Thanksgivings past

In the summer of 1986, Dad had his first heart attack. It began a process of him slowly dying over the next two years, spending weeks and months in the hospital. He was weak, cold all the time because of the blood thinners and sad. I believe he knew he was dying — too old and too sick to raise his last son.

I was in middle school at the time. I denied it as best I could, but inside I knew the end was near. I began making an effort to spend as much time with him as I could. I knew Dad had no interest in playing video games with me, but maybe he'd play checkers. I took the game downstairs to the living room, where Dad watched TV bundled in his burgundy robe.

I asked whether he wanted to play a game or two. He said sure, we could play until the news came on. I pulled over a bench and sat on a footstool. Dad turned his recliner to face the game board. And we played.

It became a nightly tradition. I would go downstairs about 9:30 p.m. We would play four or five games.

Dad was strict about the rules. One rule of checkers: If a player is presented with a jump, he must jump. Dad had maneuvered me into a corner. If I jumped him, he would double-jump me, and I'd lose. I said I didn't think I had to jump.

He picked up the top of the box and read the rule aloud to me. If we were going to play, he said, we were going to play by the rules. He beat me a lot in the early games. But I got better. It got so I could beat him two out of three or three out of five.

Dad never said no to a game, even when he had to warm his hands on cup of coffee he never finished just to keep the numbness out of them. His skin was cold and gray. He often suffered infarction.

But that never mattered during the games. Dad and I just talked. We talked about the Hawkeyes, the news, his memories growing up, how things were going in school and so on. I learned to be a storyteller from my dad, who was a salesman by trade.

The games ended December 1988, when Dad came home after another long hospital stay. He came into my room that night. He was gaunt. He hugged and kissed me. His mustache scratched my cheek. He always smelled like coffee and Aqua Velva.

"You know I love you, son," he said, almost like a question. Of course I did. I was a little scared. I asked whether he wanted to play checkers, but he said he was tired. Maybe the next night, after he got some rest.

Sometime the next morning, his battered heart finally stopped. Mine broke.

Mom died a year and a half later from a fall down stairs. I eventually landed at the home of a kind and generous east Des Moines couple.

One of the first things I did with my new dad was play a few games of checkers on the board they kept in the basement cupboard. It went a long way toward making me feel safe and grounded. My new dad and I didn't play checkers as much. We preferred pingpong in the basement, at least until the pingpong table became less a game surface and more a storage unit.

As you're out there waiting for those store doors to open, salivating over the sales, consider this: While everybody wants a happy Christmas for their family, the thing we're all trying to buy isn't for sale at any price at any store. Of all the robots and toy soldiers I ever received, I'd trade them all away to play just one more game of checkers with my dad.

We have to make a happy holiday together. The ingredients are time, talk, laughter and love.

For a starter kit, I recommend a checkerboard. A simple red-and-black number will run you about $10. Maybe you can even get it cheaper on Black Friday.

If you play it right, it will help you make memories well beyond Christmas Day.

DANIEL P. FINNEY, the Register's Metro Voice columnist, is a Drake University alumnus who grew up in Winterset and Des Moines. Reach him at 515-284-8144 or dafinney@dmreg.com. Twitter:@newsmanone.