Back when I was in high school (in public school), chess caught on in a big way. Chess. It was the weirdest thing. It was a public school in a small farming town, and pre-Nerd Renaissance, so picture a stereotypical 80s or 90s school where jocks were top of the food chain–and then picture those same jocks in their letter jackets rushing to the library on their free periods to take turns playing chess. They set up tournaments and kept track of win/loss ratios and talked about chess strategies in the hallways.

So obviously something had to be done…I guess? The school started making rules and posting them around the school: one game per student per day. One game at a time in the lounge. No chess in classrooms or in the library! The chess board must be returned to the lounge supervisor between games, then signed out by the next person wanting to play–not just passed willy-nilly from one student to another! No outside chess boards allowed!

That pretty much strangled the chess fad. The jocks went back to stuffing nerds in lockers and sneaking out to smoke behind the school, and the chess boards returned to the shelf by the lounge supervisor, where they collected dust.

Problem…solved? The whole thing was pretty surreal.