Game on!

When we were newlyweds, Eddie and I had a ritual: every day at 5pm, we'd sit on the couch, pen and paper in hand, turn the tv to Jeopardy, and play a fiercely competitive game against each other. We'd both keep score (just to make sure the other person wasn't cheating) and I'm proud to say that I usually won.

Over the next several years, we got addicted to crossword puzzles. We subscribed to the New York Times puzzle, and we'd have timed competitions to see who could complete the puzzle fastest. I'd say that we were fairly evenly matched on the easier puzzles, and I'd be more likely to get bored and give up on the harder ones.

Recently, we (like the rest of the world) have fallen in love with Sudoku. I got Eddie the New York Times Sudoku book for Christmas. He put it into his work bag to do during his down time, but I have to admit that I pilfered it from the bag and have been doing most of the puzzles in secret. This weekend we started doing Sudoku competitions. Unfortunately, he still beats me most of the time.

I guess my point is that we're competition junkies. When we were dating we were on the same intramural college bowl team at BYU and we always patted each other on the back at how well our skills complemented each other. I'm good a all things humanities and making good guesses about random facts. He's a walking sports-trivia encyclopedia whose greatest God-given talent is in choosing the right answer on multiple-choice questions. Seriously-- he's amazing with the A, B, C and D.

My mom refuses to play board games because she's afraid that she'll cry if she loses (she's in her mid-fifties-- imagine what she was like as a kid). Eddie's little brother took the ACT eight times in hopes that he'd beat his older brother's score (he didn't). One year I went to Thanksgiving at Eddie's aunt's house, and the high school kids gathered around the kitchen table to play Boggle.

When we asked to join the game, they said that they'd only let people play who had ACT scores of 33 or higher.

I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Annie has a hard time with losing. We can't get to the top of the stairs before she does or else she'll scream for ten minutes and demand a rematch. On the Curious George computer game, she'll cry if she doesn't win a gold medal. I know that in ten years, she, like her mother before her, will look at the 97 on her English paper and wonder why the girl in the seat next to her got a 98.

Since becoming a mother 5 1/2 years ago, I've learned that the competitive drive doesn't always serve me well as a mother. My kids don't need the cutest clothes or the fanciest birthday parties or spots in the most exclusive preschool. I'm no longer ashamed to admit that Bryce went through a period where he was really immature for his age and that Isaac still hardly talks.

But I've recently discovered that trying to get pregnant is another area where being competitive isn't an advantage. It's not that I'm competing against anyone else, either. Just against younger versions of myself-- the Fertile Myrtle married to Super Sperm who got pregnant three times on the first shot. But it's so hard to stop looking over my shoulder at 25 year-old Shelah holding a positive pregnancy test, when the second line on 31 year-old Shelah's test remains conspicuously and steadfastly absent.

--originally published 1/30/06