Insufferable People

In my defense, this is really more of a rant than a whine...

From an educational standpoint, public school already sucks. The little one is bored to tears, and his teachers won't give him more challenging work (he asked for something more challenging that 3+3, and they weren't having any of it).
I know that they have to teach to the most common denominator, and they seem like very nice ladies, but I'll be damned if I watch him fall through the cracks because he's actually ahead of the class and is really only struggling with the concepts that have been dumbed down.

Though that's really a side rant today...Oh yes, I'm full of good things at the moment!

I enjoy a certain amount of humility in a human being. I should probably rephrase that...Well, maybe I really shouldn't, but I'm going to anyways: I hate pompous people who just know they are better than than the entire population of earth.

Seriously, I've met some pretty awful chess parents, but scholastic chess isn't big here. Why does the one parent I've met have to be an insufferable ass? What you have and how long you're willing to blather on about it doesn't make you a better person.

The irony? He's the type of person that looks down on clubs and kids like mine, yet his son, for all his "amazing classes, experience, and overall complete brilliance", is not all that great at the game.

He asked about Alpha's work, and quickly changed the subject because it's complicated, and he didn't understand so he couldn't know it all in the conversation. I suppose that when you already know everything, there's not too much room for anything else...

I think that how a person thinks of themselves says a lot about them. Chances are, if you know with absolute certainty that you are the salt of the earth and far superior to anyone with less education or material means than yourself, you're actually just an asshole with a big paycheck and a couple of bratty kids.

My son lost his first tournament game here, and he misses his tutor and old coach. I told him something along these lines:

And that it's important to never forget where you came from. He has earned his ratings fighting tooth and nail, one slow month at a time, in a club lacking the economic ability to travel to big tournaments. He was one of the best scholastic players in the state, and he conducts himself with appreciable humility. Much like me, albeit to a far lesser extent, he knows what it's like to come from nothing, and he doesn't respect people based merely on how they feel about themselves, or how high they scored on the luck of life's draw.

Here. Right now. In this moment. I want so very fucking badly to just go home.

I miss our club. And standing out there last night, listening to that man go on? I would have given damn near anything to have my son's tutor or old coach standing next to me rolling their eyes in the dark and reminiscing about the amazing ability of mankind to be so lost in their own self-absorption, that their kids will never even have a shot at being good people. Because they don't actually care about good people--they care about being better than other people.


I was good--no random thoughts took an inappropriate stroll out of my mouth...Next week I'll meet the mother. Alpha seems to think that she'll probably be far to good to speak to me. One can always hope right? Because really,