competition

Greg thinks I'm competitive. I think he first got this opinion observing me and my brother Josh interacting with each other. About four months into our relationship, Greg and I played a friendly game of Monopoly with Josh, his wife, and his sister-in-law (my roommate at the time), and Greg had to watch (uncomfortably) as we all started to take the game more and more seriously until, as one of my favorite stories goes, Josh threw the board into the air and yelled, "IF YOU'RE NOT GOING TO SELL, I CAN'T PLAY WITH YOU!!"

Growing up, Josh and I would compete to see who could pick up their room the fastest, who our cute little cousin would come to first, and who could get the farthest in Mario Brothers. In fact, before either of us found our spouses, we bet $100 to see who could find the best spouse and appointed our mom the judge (though I don't think she ever accepted this role).

Huh. I guess I can see Greg's point.

As Greg's theories go (he has a ton of them, by the way, some conspiracy related), Josh and I are so competitive because we were always vying for our parents' attention because there are only two kids in our family. Under this same (false) assessment, he and his four siblings never competed a day in their lives because they had to learn to share their parents' attention. In fact, once when Kate and Elia were driving us crazy with too much competition, Greg yelled out, "THAT'S IT. WE'RE GETTING ANOTHER KID!" To which Elia got super excited, and I started to tear up just a little bit.

I think some healthy competition is good. When you can compete in a sport (people do that still, right?), or in a friendly game of cards, or see who can stay off sugar the longest (winner gets a pie), I mean, that's just good, clean fun! In fact, I'll even go so far as to say I think competition is part of a healthy childhood, because through it we can learn how to win, and more importantly, how to lose well. (I'll bet you I'm a better loser than you are!)

Anyhow, somewhere along the way I've switched from competing with Josh, to competing with Greg, though with less of the sibling rage. When the kids were little, Greg and I joked we should each pick one kid to parent, and see who does it best. We bet often. Who can do the most sit-ups in a minute, who can name the most states in two minutes, who is correct in the definition of callipygian. I technically owe Greg $3550, but thankfully I keep track of the accounting at home.

One of our dinner conversation cards asked: Would you rather never win, or never play? I guess I'd rather never win, though it seems the things that I know I can never win at, I simply never play (Monopoly, scrabble, football), so maybe I've found a loophole in the question, and beat the conversation card game!

So, yeah. I guess you can say I like competition. I like the thrill of winning a game and being the correct one in a bet. And, even, the ever-present thrill of knowing that I might lose it all or have to eat my words. (Which are never super tasty.) Without any real money involved, some friendly competition is a safe and fun way to get the blood flowing and push ourselves to do our best, flying Monopoly hotels and all!