The Missing Chess King Crown That Became Part of My Daily Routine
It was only a small wooden piece, no taller than my thumb, with a narrow crown cut into the top. I had started carrying it after an old chess set lost one of its kings. At first I kept it in a desk drawer because it seemed too particular to carry around. Then one morning I put it in my pocket without thinking. It stayed there for most of a year.
The crown is not especially impressive. One point is slightly blunted, and the dark finish has worn smooth on one side from being handled. The bottom has a shallow felt circle that catches on the lining of my pocket now and then. It adds just enough weight to be noticeable, but not enough to make the pocket sag. If I put it beside my keys, the two objects tap together when I walk. If I move it to the small coin pocket, it sits more quietly, though sometimes I forget it is there until I am standing in line somewhere.
I never planned to make it part of my carry. That seems to be how most of these things happen. An object gets moved from a shelf to a desk, from a desk to a jacket pocket, and eventually there is a morning when leaving without it feels slightly unfinished. The reason usually comes later, if it comes at all.
For me, the king became something to hold during the little dead spaces in the day. Not every empty moment needs filling, and I am not constantly rolling it around in my hand. But during a long call, or while waiting for a document to print, my fingers sometimes find the crown and trace the small ridges without much thought. It gives my hands something quieter to do than opening another browser tab.
There is probably some symbolic meaning available in carrying a chess king. I have heard people talk about the king as the important piece, the one that has to be protected, or the one that moves slowly while everything else works around it. None of that was really on my mind. I liked the shape. The crown gave my thumb a place to land. The piece felt balanced and solid in a way that a coin does not.
It also reminds me of where it came from. The chess set belonged to my parents, and for a while it lived in a closet with a missing pawn and two mismatched rooks. We would take it out maybe once every few years, usually when somebody visiting suggested a game. The board had a faint smell of cardboard and dust. Nobody in the family was good enough at chess for the games to become serious, which may be why the set survived so long.
Carrying the king has caused a few small inconveniences. I have left it in a jacket pocket and heard it tumble into the dryer. I have placed it on a hotel nightstand and nearly forgotten it. Once, it got wedged beneath the driver’s seat and stayed there for several days, making a soft clicking sound whenever I turned left. It does not do anything useful in the usual sense. It cannot open a package, tighten a screw, light up a dark corner, or help me find a misplaced earbud.
That is why I periodically stop carrying it.
The first time, I emptied my pockets onto the kitchen counter and decided it was unnecessary. I had been trying to reduce the number of things I carried, mostly because my pants were beginning to feel crowded. The king went into a drawer with spare change and old keys. For the next week, my pockets felt better. There was less weight on one side, and nothing bumped against my phone when I sat in the car.
Then I started noticing the absence in small ways. My hand would go to the pocket during a meeting and find nothing but fabric. I would stand at the copier with no little object to turn over. It was not distressing. It was closer to realizing that a familiar pen had been left at home. Still, after a few days, I put the king back.
It eventually moved to my work bag because I was tired of feeling it when I drove. That arrangement lasted longer than I expected. It stayed in the front pocket with a spare cable and a folded receipt, available when I wanted it but no longer part of the constant weight of my clothes. In that spot it became less of a carry item and more of a thing I carried along.
There are days when I forget it completely. There are weeks when it remains in the bag and never gets touched. I have also left it at home on purpose before mowing the lawn or running errands in clothes with shallow pockets. The decision feels practical at the time. Later, when I am sitting in the car waiting for traffic to move, I may remember that the crown is on the dresser.
I still do not think I need it. That is probably the honest part. Plenty of objects remain in a person’s daily routine without earning their place through clear usefulness. A spare pencil, an old key that no longer opens anything, a smooth stone picked up on a trip. Their value is mixed up with the fact that the hand already knows where to find them.
This morning, after noticing the king was gone, I found it on the shelf beside the front door. I must have taken it out of my pocket while sorting through the mail. I put it back into the small pocket of my work bag instead of carrying it loose. That seemed like the right compromise for now.
By the time I got home, I had forgotten about it again. I noticed it only when I reached for my keys and felt the little crown catch briefly against my fingers.