Team Sports - Day 17 of 31 Days of Blogging

I am not competitive. Except with Bryon. I really like to beat him. Unfortunately, it rarely happens. If you remember, I am a former English teacher. Do not proofread my posts and correct them and I'll try to resist doing the same to yours. I don't like that.

As a former English teacher you would think I would be really, really good at Words with Friends and Scrabble. I know a lot of impressive words and I'm a pretty good speller. Before Grace was born, Bryon and I played somewhere around 200 games of Scrabble. I won three. I'm pretty sure he let me win at least two of those.

The problem isn't that I'm a poor wordsmith it's that I'm not competitive. Or strategic. I'm impatient. I'll look at the board for a few minutes, rearrange letters and then finally just plop something down. Bryon refuses to play a word for less than a double digit score. He utilizes the double and triple scoring tiles to the utmost advantage. He's a player. I'm a plopper.

He doesn't just beat me. He crushes me. I told him he's lucky I'm a good loser because most people couldn't tolerate that level of defeat.

I've just never been very competitive. Even when I was younger, my brother always wanted to play games and I didn't. Stratego was his game of choice. I hated Stratego. I just didn't have the imagination or the patience for it and he crushed me at it when we did play. Now he plays hours and hours of World of Warcraft online. Another game that requires lots of imagination.

Even in physical sports I'm not competitive. Sure it's fun to win, but if not ... well even the losers get ice cream most of the time. I tried playing junior high volleyball but when a few girls played every positition I just didn't see the point of practicing and killing myself and never touching the ball. Same in basketball. It was a lot of running up and down the court but very little actually playing on my part. I didn't have to. A couple of girls pretty much played the entire game. I was just filling out the team.

I did like playing softball. I volunteered to be the catcher because I figured that was my best chance of seeing some action during the entire game. Besides that, no one else wanted to do it. They were all afraid of Mickie's pitch. The game was slow pitch. Mickie was not slow. She threw a screaming softball.

Since high school, I played a little coed softball with Bryon on a couple of teams and we played sand volleyball but other than that, I just don't dig it. I don't even really like sports on tv. Thankfully Bryon isn't a big sports guy either. He does love him some Huskers football and we usually Husker up around her on fall Saturday game days but I usually only last about ten minutes watching the games. I can't stand the suspense. In a good book, I've often flipped to the last few pages to make sure the good guys win and all ends well before continuing on. In televised football, unless it's recorded, you can't do that. So I tune in for a few minutes when Bryon whoops and hollers and get the highlights from him when it's over.

Grace has been playing soccer for the past six seasons (two a year) and this season is probably her last. She didn't really even want to play this time but I signed her up. We are going to get her into basketball this winter at the First Baptist Church's Upward Basketball program. I think she'll be good at it and if she likes it she can play basketball at Niangua. Niangua doesn't have soccer and there's no way we are driving her all over the place to play a game she doesn't even really want to play.

Her coach at school said she's very athletic and competitive and might be the most athletic kid in the lower grades. I see her competitive side when she plays games at home with us or her Nana. She doesn't like to lose. She gets that from her Daddy. She hasn't been all that aggressive at soccer but if she finds a sport she really likes, I think she's definitely got the potential.

Of course if she becomes a professional women's basketball player or something someday, I'll never be able to go to her games because I won't be able to stand the suspense.

I'll have to wait for the highlight reel.