Chapter 1.11: Competitive Much?

Okay, I will freely admit to being a very competitive person. I like to win. And more than that (as I recently read in the book Geektastic) I like to beat others. It not so much that I want to be the victor as it is I want to beat the loser. And I am not athletically inclined. Like, at all. I missed my sister with a snowball thrown from maybe four feet away. My PE teachers were convinced one of my legs was shorter than the other because I jogged wrong. I can fall over just standing there (stone cold sober for those of you wondering). My friend Ron and I have this joke that I could be floating through the air and find something to trip over. Clearly, I'm not going to unleash that competitive streak through sports.

So I use my mind and excel in board games and card games (and some forms of computer games. Not MMORPGs, but games like Frogger and Bookworm). Actually it's probably the reason I did so well in school; I wanted to win the grades game (also explains why I loved correcting people's math papers with a red pen. Yeah, I may have had issues). I liked being able to go "What did you get?" while mostly just waiting for them to ask me so I could say "Oh, not too bad. I got a 96. I completely see where I went wrong with problem 14. I can't believe I missed it." But in a way that sounds a little less condescending, because I really didn't want to gloat. And after all, I did still have friends (albeit, friends who were good at school as well and probably just as competitive).

But back to games. I like to win and I will fight for it. I am not a bad loser, nor a bad winner (at least, I don't think so. Most of the time). But I can get a little intense. This is why no one in my family will play Monopoly with me. They've actually labeled me the Monopoly Nazi. What can I say, I really want to own that row of mansions you cringe at approaching and hold your breath as you slip past. You know, that row you pray you go to jail before getting to, just so I don't have the chance of landing there and losing $4000 dollars to rent.

Mostly, I indulge my overdeveloped sense of competition through the games on Facebook like Farkle and Word Challenge. I don't have to wait to find someone to play with and yet I can still try to beat my friends. My favorite game, and rather unsettlingly intense addiction, is Bejeweled. And the best part about this game is the scores reset every Tuesday. I can sit there and play twenty games without breaking a sweat. And I often top the scoreboard.

But I think it may be getting a little out of hand now. My mom, who also plays the game, got a very very good score recently, beating me out of the first place position on the scoreboard. Now, being number two is nothing to scoff at when the top scores are near or over 400,000 points. But I couldn't let Mom stay there. I had to beat her. I just kept hitting "Play Again" over and over. Luckily the game only takes a minute or I might have wasted even more of my life trying to win at a game that has no actual value outside the world of Facebook.

And I may tell myself to just let it go (I may even listen to myself for a while) but I know that need to be the best will come back again. For the most part, it isn't an unhealthy thirst for perfection (I know that I cannot and will never be perfect and that I cannot win at everything) but when that Bejeweled frenzy takes over, I always wonder if one day it'll go too far. Because people don't want to be outdone all the time and when they lose, they don't like to have it thrown in their face. For now, I'm okay. I'll deal with the future when it shows up. But I'll deal with it better than you ;)