How Competitive Are You?

 RHYS BOWEN: I have a confession to make: I am very competitive. Always have been. Always wanted to be top of the class in school, to win the ballet competition. I entered strange competitions as a child: I won a cash prize for my essay on why I liked a department store.  I was a really keen tennis player in my youth--played for my school, my college, but then later in life did not enjoy league tennis because it was so competitive, so perhaps I'm mellowing.

When I am playing any family game I want to win (this became ridiculous when I played Trivial Pursuit with my kids and they ended up handicapping me by having two of them reading out clues from different categories at the same time. And me: Iceland and 1934. Kids: rats!

And I regret to say that I have created competitive children. Two were elite athletes, playing for college and one for the US. But the others are just as competitive. Daughter Clare came home from school furious because she didn’t get a perfect score on a test in driver’s ed and she thought the instructor’s answer was wrong. It was a pass/fail course. It didn’t matter. But it did to her.

Over the years we have had endless family competitions: volleyball, corn hole, bocce ball as well as the games we play on holidays--Taboo, Reverse Charades and the Name Game--the current favorite. Everyone writes the name of a famous person on  a piece of paper. The reader reads them all out and we try to guess who chose which name. It sounds simple but the names are really creative and funny.

You should have seen the family when we went to a fun park with go-karts, water boats, mini-golf etc. The intensity to win as they drove those go-karts!  (especially the sons-in-law) This summer we’re all going to San Diego for a week on the beach. I imagine there will be plenty of beach games, swimming races etc!

Our strangest competition: when the first grandchildren were babies I bought a wooden puzzle of sea creatures you had to lift out with a magnetic fishing rod. The adults (especially the males) turned this into fierce competition as to who could lift all of them out and then put them all back first.  We had crackers one year with racing wind-up penguins in them. Endless races across the dining table.

But just the other day I saw a picture of a competition I would never want to enter: competitive ironing. That’s right. Room full of ironing boards and women ironing. It was for a Miss America pageant long ago when ironing was a skill of every good housewife.  I would be dead last!

So how about you? Is your family competitive? What is the strangest competition you have ever entered?

LUCY BURDETTE: Yes competitive! But sheesh the first thing I thought when I saw this post was that I better get my answer in before Hank did, LOL. And I know not to play scrabble with this JRW crowd either. My family was pretty competitive, I can remember playing rounds of board games like risk and monopoly, which my older sister almost always won. We also played giant games of kick the can while on vacation with all of the age groups represented. Teams would do anything to get near enough to home base to  kick the can and free their imprisoned teammates. I can remember things like adults driving a car near the can so other team members could drop out of the passenger side and take the guardians of the can by surprise. Or dress up in costume and pretend to be a random passerby, and then burst into a mad dash to the can.

On a more serious note, I was very competitive in school too. I think it was fifth grade when I received a report card that had two B’s on it (the rest A’s.) I went to the teacher, crying. She agreed to change my gym grade from B to A-. (Honestly, it wasn’t because my parents were ogres!) And to be honest, to stay in this writing profession, you have to be willing to compete hard with a million other writers. The great thing about our Jungle Red family is that we’ve figured out how to support each other at the same time!

HALLIE EPHRON: I am not competitive.

Stop laughing.

Seriously, I hate board games. Hate card games. I play Candyland with my grandson only under duress. I will NOT play Scrabble with my husband because he always… gets the good letters. All I get are vowels.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Right, Hallie. It’s the GAME’S fault. :-)  But I don’t play Scrabble with Jonathan because he’s too good. I mean--he is incredible. Words on many levels.  I can beat him at every other game, though, just saying. So he won’t play with me, either. We do compete on the Sunday NYT Spelling Bee word, though. (ANd FYI, I STILL insist Provolone is a proper name, and should not count. Anyway.)

(Have you played Code Words? It is SO much fun! We play it with the kids and grandchildren, and it’s amazing. Very brain-twisting.)

Okay, yes, I am competitive, but I kind of don’t look at it that way. I like to do the best I can possibly do at whatever it is, is more how I see it. I understand, though, that psychologically it’s not always ….the most rewarding thing to do. 

I well remember, word for word, a conversation I had with my mother when I was in high school. She told me: Honey, it’s better if you don’t always win. And I was absolutely baffled. I said: Why?  

And she said: someday you’ll understand.

JENN McKINLAY: I am actually not competitive at all. Weird, right? I have always played games for fun not to win -- much to the chagrin of my volleyball teammates. If I (or anyone else) hit the ball into the parking lot or the duck pond, I thought it was hilarious. The men used to get mad at me, but I wore them down. Finally, one of them admitted that while we were the losingest team in the league we were the most fun and laughed through the whole season. Sometimes we were laughing too hard to play -- you can’t beat that with a trophy.

Also, I love board games but mostly because of the ridiculous antics that come with them. Hooligan 2 came out wearing swim goggles, potholders, and a clothespin on his nose when he had to give his Ti Tia a winner’s foot massage at Monopoly! Hilarious!

As for writing, I am mostly competitive with myself and am constantly trying to write a better story, a tighter mystery, or try on a new genre. I genuinely believe that there is enough room at the table for everyone and if another author enjoys brilliant success, it reminds me that I have that potentiality, too.  

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Posting next to last to prove my point. Not competitive. (So that makes three for and three against, right? Julia can tip the balance! Seriously, having grown up with a brother ten years older that was the BEST at everything, there didn't seem much point. I'm terrible at sports (always picked last) so no fun competing there, either. I do want to write the best possible books, but that's because I don't want to disappoint myself or my readers. But I love love love trivia, so if I ever get to play on a pub team again, you'd better watch out! 

RHYS: So, dear friends--how competitive are you? And what is the weirdest competition in which you've taken part?