The Coded Letters
Lee Washington

1When Grandma asked me to help her clean her house, I knew it would be a big job. Grandma disliked disposing of things; she had accumulated so much stuff that she joked she needed a multitude of homes just to hold it all. Grandma told me that she had the capability to clean the kitchen on her own; she asked me to begin organizing the living room.

2The living room was luminous with sunlight as I sifted through the piles of paper on the desk. As I looked at a collection of magazines stacked on a shoebox, I began to wonder how many magazine subscriptions Grandmother had. When I attempted to slide the box out from under the magazines, it toppled on the floor with an audible crash and the lid fell ajar. Inside I found letters that were addressed to Grandma. They did not have much writing inside. Instead, they contained bizarre combinations of letters and numbers, such as BxNf6 and Rh4. I was baffled by the strange letters and pondered what the codes could mean.

3“How is everything going?” Grandma asked. She stepped into the room with soap covering her hands, indicating they had been submerged in water in the kitchen sink.

4I suddenly felt bashful. I hoped Grandma would not think I was being nosy, but I wanted to know about the letters. Luckily, Grandma noticed the letters first and was enthusiastic about them. Grandma wiped her hands on her apron and hurried over to where I was standing.

5“My correspondence chess letters!” Grandma interjected, picking up a few of them. “I was victorious in this game,” she said grandly, waving a letter at me.

6“When I first moved here, I kept in contact with an acquaintance from my university by playing chess with her through the mail.” said Grandma. Then, I asked about the codes. Grandma took a chessboard out of the closet and pointed to the black and white squares. She said each box had a number and a letter. Then she pulled out a small white figurine that resembled a castle tower. “This is called the rook. The code Rh4 means that my opponent moved her rook to this square,” Grandma said as she gestured toward a square on one side of the board. I was astounded as I imagined waiting days for a letter to continue the game.

7“These games were incredibly suspenseful, but we were never envious if the other person won the game,” Grandma explained. "I started our first game by writing the first letter. In it, I wrote the code to describe my first move. In all my subsequent letters, I made moves based on my opponent's moves." After our conversation, Grandma and I decided to begin our correspondence chess game when I returned home.
Question:

Make a generalization about all grandmas based ONLY on section one of The Coded Letters by Lee Washington.

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