A Little More Competition

As I played my roommates in Scrabble this evening, I realized that I didn't start enjoying the game until I had secured a solid thirty point lead over second place. Until that point, I just kind of sat there with animosity churning in my heart. I always liked the motto that I grew up with, If at first you don't succeed, find something you're good at. And you know, as anti-team-player and non-traditional as that sounds, I think that ultimately it's an excellent motto. If you're not good at something, and you don't really enjoy being not good at it, then get your self together and move on to something else. And there have only been a few times that I've thought back on that motto with regret, because I'm confident that with some training, I could be an excellent football player now. Even with soccer, I was pretty decent, but I just kind of gave up on both because I wasn't the best. I moved on to things that I could dominate at because, let's be honest, being the best is so much cooler than not being the best.
I'm sure you think that the mentality is disgusting, but it's not as if I quit everything I'm not good at... and if I start something, I will definitely fulfill the obligation that I've signed myself up for. However, if it comes for signing up for it again, I will definitely decline. That's why I don't play 21 with my roommates anymore, and it's why I go to bars and clubs to drink and dance as opposed to pick up women. I know what I'm good at, and I know what I'm not. While you go and compete with all the other "bros in da club," I'm going to stand over here with my shot of tequila. I'm fantastic at tequila... like, you don't even know.
But if there's a chance that I may rise to the top, I will fight like it's my job to ensure that I've given everything I can. In high school, I gave up having friends (partly because I wasn't too popular, partly because I loved me some school) and focused primarily on getting the highest GPA possible. That's why when it was miscalculated, I marched my Walmart polo and jeans combo into the vice principals office and demanded a recount... essentially, I was the Al Gore of the South-Doyle High School 2008 graduating class. People wonder why it is that I take competition so seriously, especially when it comes to things as simple as calling shotgun or a game of Scrabble, and what I don't think people understand is that this comes from a deep-rooted, dark psychological place that I like to call: Daddy Issues. Let's recap.
As a small six-year-old, Wendell instilled the competition bug in me early on. In the wake of my grandmother's death, my parents bought me a Beta fish. His name, may he rest in peace, was George. I loved George and took care of him as if he were my own child. I would look at him, early and often every day. My dad must have been threatened by my love of George so he acquired his own fish... a small freshwater catfish. You can only imagine my surprise when I walked in and found the bottom half of George lingering at the top of the aquarium as the small catfish nipped at his remains. Much like the Titanic until the mid-nineties, the top half of George could not be found. I was devastated, and couldn't put my anguish into words. I ran up to my dad and said, George is dead! George is dead! Your catfish ate George! and he responded with only two words, Catfish. Domination. and he held his hands over his head in a way that would haunt me for years to come. Wendell never allowed me to live a subpar life, so I knew that I had to live mine to surpass all expectations... for me and for George.

And the "domestic competition abuse" didn't stop at any specific point. When we would have family game night, Dad always requested that we play Monopoly, and I would instantly get a knot in my throat. I knew how it would end... Dad would have Park Place and Boardwalk WITH hotels, and I'd just being sitting over there across the table with Reading Railroad and friggin Marvin's Gardens, counting how many white one dollar bills I had. He would offer to give me "a loan" to tease me along, and sometimes I wondered if he did the same thing to animals out in the wild... shot them in some terribly sad place just to let them bleed out in front of him. One time, I went so far to hit the table and mess up the board, after which I was given a speech on being a good sport. I wanted to give my dad (and pretty much any athlete I've ever interacted with) the "how to not be a assface when you're competing with someone obviously under your level." So, after a while, I honed in on my skills. I put together what I knew I was good at, how I liked to play, and what I was confident in and merged those things together to make a list of things that I liked to excel at. Over the years, I decided that I didn't do well at:

• team things
• movement that involved the cooperation of a group
• any social interaction that depended on confidence in my appearance
• anything that had to do with manliness or my sexuality
• actually, anything involving my own sex
• activities involving money, fake or real

But. That left me with my stronghold... books, pop culture, ironic and fast-paced wit, words and writing, and sports that only involved me or one other person (archery, shooting guns at things, fake gymnastics, ballroom dancing, and occasional tennis matches). And once I found the things I was good at, I found that I was a much happier person overall. No, I haven't sat down across from my father with a Monopoly board in years, but I like him a lot better this way than I did when I was in those crucial preschool years.
And maybe there's something deep-rooted in this competition bug; it could explain my absolute ferocious driving style and the reason I carry a metal pipe in the front seat... but that's a different blog for a different day. For me competition was so much more than someone being better or worse than you at something... my experience with competition was always a way to be belittled. If you weren't the best, you weren't privvy to the conversations and words that others had to say to and/or about you. Competition was the last thing I wanted to be apart of when I was younger, and in a way, that's why I try to avoid it today at all costs. At the end of the day, you have to sit down with yourself and say some words that I believe Confucius said first, Haters gonna hate. When I walked into the living room and found the Scrabble board on the coffee table assembled ever so carefully with a not so nice message, I found it reminiscent of my time in middle and high school, but I did not allow myself to go there... this Justin was not one who had gotten out first in dodgeball or awkwardly stood at the edge of the party with no one to talk to... no, this was a Justin with a steady lead in Scrabble and a command of words barely ever used in the English language, and that is a Justin to be proud of.