Being competitive is wired into the human psyche, particularly in men, and I am certainly not the exception to the rule. In fact, if anything I exemplify it. As I’ve said here before, I am competitive to a fault. What I haven’t really said is what I mean by ‘to a fault’. The dictionary defines fault as follows: mistake: a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention. Re-read that, adding emphasis to the terms ‘bad judgment’ and ‘ignorance’ and you’ll have a good handle on what I mean.

Lest you get the wrong idea, I am not competitive where it isn’t appropriate or in cases where I am clearly the beginner at something and the other person isn’t. I said I was ignorant, not stupid. People who are like that need help. OK, more help than me, anyhow.

I knew someone like that when I lived in Florida. One beautiful Saturday they came to the beach with a group of us who were going out to play on our jet skis, and they had a romantic interest in another member of the group. Well, everything was all good until someone they perceived as a rival (and who was a very accomplished jet ski rider) came back in from ripping it up pretty good. We all applauded jokingly as the walked up from the surf. Not to be shown up, our intrepid hero jumped up and headed out to one of my skis that was beached there. They’d had all of 20 minutes experience on a ski but that didn’t stop them from going out to try and show up their ‘rival’. They got up to something approaching 40 miles per hour and pulled a hard left trying to skid a turn and throw up a big rooster tail. Now, if you’ve spent much time on a ski you know that, at that high a speed, you best keep your turn pretty shallow and, if you want to remain with the ski, you better lean hard into the turn to keep the outboard sponson out of the water – don’t and it digs an rather firmly (which is a bad thing). Well, they hadn’t spent much time on a ski and didn’t know either of those things so they fully deflected the handlebars with the throttle still at full. Since jet skis turn from the rear by deflecting their thrust to one side to ‘push’ the back end around, this resulted in the ski going immediately sideways. Being not nearly as hydrodynamic moving sideways (read: like pushing a sheet of plywood through the water) as they are going forward the ski immediately stopped. I’m not kidding you when I say that the ski stopped from nearly 40 mph to zero in what I would guess to be 10 or 15 feet. Now, to be fair, they did succeed in producing a very impressive rooster tail; it was the largest I’ve ever seen from a jet ski by far, before or since. It was easily 120 feet long and reached something like 50 feet high at its apex. the problem was that, once the water cleared, the ski was riderless and no one was in the water anywhere around it. In the thousands of hours we’ve spent at the beach and the dozens of riders we’ve let ride our skis, it was the only time I felt anything near a sense of panic. It was full on dread. We were set up where we were because there are good waves there to jump but, with them comes a strong offshore current and this whole incident happened a few thousand feet offshore. My head was immediately filled with news headlines like “the body was never found” and “believed to have washed out to sea.” After a moment of stunned silence we bolted to go out and find them. Everything came out OK in the end. They’d only suffered a badly bruised knee and shin where it smacked into the ski and a badly bruised ego as they were ripped off. The reason we couldn’t spot them was that they’d been thrown nearly as far as the rooster tail had gone. It just never occurred to any of us on the beach to look for them 100 feet from the ski.

Now, that is painfully competitive. I, too, am painfully competitive, just not to that degree. Unfortunately, my general partner in crime, Tim, is just as competitive as I am and perhaps a little more painfully so. He is also my gym partner and there are times when that is not a good combination. As often as not, we play racquetball as our cardio or warm-up. And everything is fine until we get a long volley going or one of us makes an especially good shot, then neither of us wants to be the one that drops the ball as it were, so we will work that much harder to make each successive shot. the longer the volley lasts, the more competitive we get until it eventually reaches a point where making the next shot is imperative. If that means you have to hit the wall hard, you hit the wall hard. The problem is, those walls don’t give at all – not even a little – and neither Tim nor I are as young and resilient as we once were.

Just a couple of weeks ago I made this one shot that is one of those really lucky strokes. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was like. OK, like, picture the bullet scene in The Matrix. You know, the one where the bullets just sort of slowly streak through the air and Neo just dodges them all. Got that image now? OK, my shot was nothing like that, but that is a really cool scene, isn’t it? No, my shot was really more of a ninja-like thing straight out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. OK, no, so it really wasn’t all that ninja either.

Alright, so here’s what happened. Tim’s shot came off the front wall hard, fast and right at my head. Hitting it wasn’t an option; at the rate it was coming there was no time to get set for any shot. My choices were (a)duck or (b)get hit in the head. Given that I’d tried (b) several times before and didn’t much like it, I thought I’d give (a) a try. I was able to duck the ball, but just barely. Then, as I watched in amazement, the ball hit the back wall and rebounded high because of amount of energy it was carrying and the spin it had. After pausing just long enough to mentally thank Newton for his first law and the whole preservation of momentum thing, I managed to nearly dive cross-court and get enough of it to keep it in play. To summarize, I made a shot that any really good racquetball player could make routinely. Given that I am not a really good racquetball player (and neither is Tim) I was feeling pretty good about it.

The problem was that this shot happened well into what was already a pretty good volley for Tim and I so we more determined than usual not to be the one to miss it. I won’t bore you with a blow by blow, but it ended with Tim having hit the back glass so hard it left him seeing stars and me with a slightly sore ankle from an awkward landing. Neither injury was enough to make us do more than pause and we both felt fine when we left but that isn’t always the case. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but Tim and I have long since stopped playing actual games. We serve and hit the ball around like in a game, but we don’t keep score. We just keep chasing the little green ball until we are sufficiently tired to quit. The reason is that, when we do keep score, well, if we keep score it becomes decidedly more competitive and we end up hurting ourselves or each other. I don’t mean hurt bad, but at all is bad enough.

And we try not to confine our considerable stupidity to the rather limited space of the racquetball court. I’ve been pretty sore numerous time as a direct result of phrases like “hey, I bet I can do that leg press machine with the pin all the way down.” I really feel worse for Tim, though. I am big enough that I naturally weigh more than your average guy so, for me, the max weight on that machine (something just over 400 lbs, I think) is heavy but not a major challenge. I carry around a rather large percentage of that every day anyway, so I would up the ante by doing more reps. Tim, on the other hand, carries significantly less weight around on a day to day basis so it is a bit of a taller wall for him to scale. He makes up for the size difference with a greater willingness to hurt himself.

We’ve often discussed the very real possibility that he was dropped on his head as a small child, but we agree it would take a larger trauma than that to make him that dumb. You are probably wondering how I talk about my enemies about now if this is how I talk about my friends, but you’ll notice the use of “we” in the above sentence. We, meaning he and I, have these discussions so I’m not talking behind his back. Tim is like a brother to me and without a doubt the most reliable, generous person I know, but he is brain damaged. When he and I were handling all the A/V stuff at the church where we met it was not at all uncommon for me to come in and find him standing on the top of a 25′ A-frame ladder. On his tip-toes. Leaning way out. And the ladder would be wobbling. And I’m not even talking about the top rung, mind you. I mean the top of the ladder. You know, the part that is made of flimsy plastic and has “NOT A STEP” prominently featured all over it? He would be up there re-aiming one of the theatrical lights for an upcoming play or something. If not there I might find him with the scissor lift fully extended to over 30 feet standing on the top of the railing around the platform. You know, the railing that is there to keep you from falling out? And he would be there doing these things with no one else in the building (and he wasn’t even expecting me) so if he fell no one would know it. Oh, and this would be at 10 or 11 at night and his wife had already gone to bed. Since we both commonly worked up there until 3 or 4 in the morning when the stage set was changing she wouldn’t have really been alarmed when he didn’t show up. It would have been 8 or more hours before anyone even looked for him. I still have no idea how he never fell. Now, if that isn’t brain damage, I don’t know what is. You can also see the kind of mentality I’m up against when things get really competitive.

I don’t know if it is normal or healthy to be competitive to the degree Tim and I are, though I suspect it isn’t entirely so. It is just how we are. I do know that being competitive to some degree is important. America wouldn’t be the world’s most powerful nation were it not for competition. I mean, the whole free enterprise system our economy is built on is predicated on competition. That is why I don’t understand why we’ve begun to shelter our kids from any sense of it. I mean, if I attend one more kids soccer, T-ball or football game where they don’t keep score I’m gonna lose it. I am so tempted to carry poster board and a marker up there and keep score myself. We’ve become so concerned that our precious little progeny might get their widdle feewings hurt that we can’t bear the thought of them actually losing at something. Their little psyche might forever be damaged. So we stop keeping score and everyone gets a trophy. I wonder what the kids think they are even playing for.

It isn’t that I want a child to be disappointed. I love kids and hate to see them feeling defeated. But that disappointment serves a purpose. I have a news flash for you: life keeps score. If you never let your kids fail at anything they are in for a rough ride when they get into the real world. Am I the only one that remembers a time when not every kid who tried out for little league baseball made the team? If little Johnny stinks at baseball, let him find that out now and encourage him to find what he is good at. Don’t give him a trophy and the same pat on the head the star player gets. If you aren’t careful he’ll grow up to be a union worker. =o{P

I’m not saying kids need to be taught to be painfully competitive like some of us are. I’m not sure that is something you can teach, to be honest. I suspect it is either in your personality or it isn’t. I know I have it, and I don’t regret it at all. That competitive nature has served me well throughout my life. I am where I am in my career because I was and am driven to be the best. It doesn’t always serve me well at the gym, but in many ways it does; Tim and I both work out harder than we otherwise would if we weren’t competing. And isn’t that what we are there for, after all? So I will keep on competing with Tim and will take the occasional ball to the head or head to the wall. I wouldn’t have it any other way. While I’m on the subject, allow me to pass on one last bit of wisdom (and perhaps the first): If you are going to get competitive at the gym, the hip adduction machine is not the one to do it on. It leaves you sore in ways and places you don’t want to be sore. That’s all I’m sayin’. That’s what I’ve heard, anyhow…

/g