(See title below... I couldn't get "Re" to be crossed out in this thing)

A ReSurgence of the Coolness of Kevin: Baby Steps in Defense of the King

Okay guys, we all know that I'm pretty uncool. It is quite an established fact. Particularly if we're talking about the teenage guys, but in fact amongst all of the finca boys, I generally fall pretty low on the totem pole. I'm not great at soccer, I lose arm wresting contests on a pretty regular basis, and I generally make a face rather than laughing every time someone decides to release some methane into the atmosphere. That last one isn't even really normally a factor they consider in the rankings... but it still drops me another couple of places out of puro confusion.

Anyway, I would actually sit down and write out the ranking of every male on the finca, but I think I'd get a bit saddened about where I fall, so I'm not going to. Please just rest assured that the aforementioned categories are the sole factors by which one's manliness can be measured (apart from the top ranking people not liking you, of course).

The point of this blog post, then, is to let you know that I'm moving up in the rankings. Yes, I technically can now beat almost half of the house 5 boys in arm wrestling, and I've somehow convinced most of the kids (through no effort whatsoever on my part) that I played a ton of soccer in the states and came back much better. However, that's all shadows and mirrors... or the placebo effect... or something.

The reality is that there's another factor in the rankings. This factor was added over the course of the 8 months that I wasn't here. You, of course, are trying to guess what it is. Is it foot speed? Is it the ability to eat massive amounts of food? Is it the ability to aguantar a ton of picante? Is it how willing I am to pick on the younger kids? No.

Here it is, here's the secret: chess. It turns out that my nerd years as the president of my high school chess club are actually finally producing positive results! I knew this would happen sooner or later!

Over the past eight months, the finca boys  have begun to play massive amounts of chess. I have no clue how it started. I tried to start it myself by bringing several chess sets down to the finca, but it never caught on during my time here. In my absence, however, the kids have arrived at the point where during the middle of a game, they'll have a conversation of, "Shoot man, why didn't you castle?" "Oh, I don't like castling that early.. I often get caught in  back-row checkmates" or "Dang, José, you should totally have focused on releasing that pin" "No man, that pin isn't that bad, and I'm taking this opportunity to further strengthen my own attack! Look at the three-pronged attack I just set up on the king's pawn!" "Yeah, but with that pin he could totally crown one of his pawns in two turns!" "Oh shoot! You're right!"

To be honest, I had no idea where they got the vocabulary from until I started to get overwhelmed by questions like "Kevin, which country is Capablanca from?" and "Have you ever met Bobby Fischer?" Given that almost nobody outside of chess circles knows about Capablanca or what a pin is, I asked and discovered that they had a book on chess that all of them had read front to back.

They aren't yet by any means at grandmaster level, but these kids aren't too shabby either. I can't help but being a bit curious as to how the 12-or-13-year-old version of me would fare against these kids. Given that they do occasionally beat me now, the younger version of me might have been in trouble.

Luckily, though, I can probably take most if not all of the kids in nine games out of ten. Who would've thought my chess skill would've been the catalyst responsible for sparking a Kevin coolness  revolution* in the eyes of our youth?

Having said that, let's be honest, I'm still quite far down on the totem pole. Baby steps.

*Not to be confused with a Kevin Kuehl-Ness revolution (a revolution of which I have no idea what to think (except for that Kevin Kuehl is an awesome former finca missionary and 'Ness' reminds me vaguely of something Nintendo-related and/or a Loch (Lock? Lach?)))