I've always been a little competitive in the academic field. Since I am not athletic, I thrive on competition regarding my mind and my own will power to accomplish it. No, I am not a good team player. Nothing frustrates me more than believing I can win, and losing because of the mistake of others. As long as I lose due to my own mistakes or sheer knowledge of someone doing something better than me, I am okay.
So as an only child of a single father, I enjoyed many weekends playing board games with him. He never let me win and so when I did, I knew I had truly accomplished that victory. I will never forget the valuable lesson learned during a competitive game of Scrabble.
This particular game began with a bang for me. I selected the letter closest to "a", and so had gained the advantage of placing the first word down. With my letters I formed the word "greedy" strategically placing the "y" on the double letter score. Because it was the first word of the game, my score doubled because it covered the pink star in the center of the board.
"Wow, thirty points, " my father told me. "That is a great start."
My father looked the board over carefully and played the word "draft" and received eighteen points for his word. No matter how well I did or did not play a word on each turn, I always remained at least five to ten points ahead of my father.
"I am ruling this game," I thought to myself as we were finally nearing the end. With only a few more letters to play, this game would be over and the win would be mine.
"There it is," I suddenly said to myself. With four letters remaining I placed an "r" in the spot that formed two words and gave me twenty more points.
"I believe you misspelled that word," my father challenged. We pulled out the dictionary, and indeed my father was correct. I removed my letter and lost my turn. With one sweeping blow, my father used his last three letters and I subtracted four points from my score. With my spelling error and my father's last word, I lost the game by two points. I should have known that first word was warning me about the traps of life.
