Reluctant to Walk One Step Ahead: Competition

“Dad is also competitive, but he is his own worst opponent. When he was 81, he set his mind on shooting his age on the golf course. After a tournament at his club, he emailed me the following: ‘I came as close to shooting 81 today as I’ll ever come. The score keeper told me after the 17^th hole that I needed a par five on 18 to reach my goal. I hit a good drive, a good lay up to the creek, a decent chip shot to the fringes of the green, and a second chip shot to within six feet of the hole. I then two-putted for an 82! Our team came in first, but that wasn’t much consolation.’ My father, I must say, is the sorest winner in the family.” Skip Eisiminger

Skip the B.S.

by Skip Eisiminger

“From a worthy opponent great wisdom flows.”—Confucius

“Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.”—Erma Bombeck

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—8/6/2012—Though competition originally meant “seek together,” it still brings out the best but also the worst in us.

I recall reading about Lance Armstrong slogging his way up some impossible Alpine road when some French women stepped from the crowd and spat on him. I imagine it had something to do with those T-shirts and bumper stickers that read, “America 6, France 0.” To level the playing field, some American women raised their blouses and bared their breasts when their blue-eyed boy passed. Lance said it felt like a tailwind, and he went on to win his seventh Tour in seven years.

The New Yorker cartoonists despise the desperately competitive, perhaps because their profession forces them to vie weekly for places in the magazine that publishes them. Barbara Smaller has one monk in training say to a fellow disciple, “When I was making money, I made the most money, and now that I’m spiritual, I’m the most spiritual.”

Victoria Roberts draws a woman saying to her tennis opponent, “I’ll be the headlights, you be the deer.”

And Robert Mankoff invents a man on a couch telling someone on the phone, “You’re depressed? My depression makes your depression look like euphoria.”

“Once competitive,” I’ve heard critics warn, “always insatiable.”

In the 1990s, the still hungry “Peanuts” billionaire Charles Schulz threatened to kill Charlie’s beagle if Lynn Johnston, creator of “For Better or Worse,” allowed her beloved but aging sheepdog to die. Schulz was furious that a dead Farley might receive more publicity than Snoopy.

In our normal-for-the-most-part family, we compete in all manner of ways, including playing “burn-out” with a Frisbee, holding our breath under water, and eating hot peppers. A few years before she died, my mother had a pre-dinner conversation with her pastor’s mother which I eavesdropped on while setting the table with the pastor. Mother opened by saying, “My daughter in Arizona has a college degree in home economics but is doing very well in real estate.”

“That’s nice,” the guest parried. “My son in Florida has a degree in physics and teaches middle-school science.”

“Well, my younger daughter in New Jersey has her MA and leads self-discovery workshops.”

“My son in North Carolina has degrees in biology and geology and teaches high school in Charlotte.”

“Our son Skipper has a PhD from USC and teaches at Clemson.”

“Our daughter and your minister has her Doctor of Divinity degree from Duke.” Mother was stumped—she had no more children and no more degrees, divine or otherwise. Before the two could get into the grandchildren, Dad announced that supper was served.

Dad is also competitive, but he is his own worst opponent. When he was 81, he set his mind on shooting his age on the golf course. After a tournament at his club, he emailed me the following: “I came as close to shooting 81 today as I’ll ever come. The score keeper told me after the 17^th hole that I needed a par five on 18 to reach my goal. I hit a good drive, a good lay up to the creek, a decent chip shot to the fringes of the green, and a second chip shot to within six feet of the hole. I then two-putted for an 82! Our team came in first, but that wasn’t much consolation.” My father, I must say, is the sorest winner in the family.

My sisters have several dogs in the hunt as well. The older is so theologically competitive that she has informed her sister, now an ordained minister, and me, a missionary humanist, that we are both going to hell because her faith trumps ours, but that’s grist for another mill.

Forty years before our Methodist minister went to the seminary, she was spending the night with two of her cousins. Before going to sleep, my sister suggested they all pray beside their beds. The first cousin prayed for a minute and hopped into bed. The second prayed for another minute before she quit, but my sister stayed down for an estimated ten minutes. Years later, one cousin told me how impressed she’d been with my sister’s devotion. When I relayed that to the minister, she admitted she’d stayed on her knees as long as she had largely to impress them. “I would have stayed longer,” she said, “but I was kneeling on a hardwood floor.”

I told her not to feel bad, for I had competed in similar petty ways. Once, when Dad was 84, and I was 60, Dad came to visit. While I was urinating, I heard him in the guest bathroom starting to whiz. I tried my best, but even though Dad got a late start, he finished first.

This craziness appears to be inherited because often, when I shake hands with one of our grandsons, he says, “One, two, three, four—I declare a thumb war.”

Years ago, when a friend asked why I was so serious about my running, I replied, “So that somewhere, sometime, I can beat someone.” But in recent years, the pilot light in my competitive furnace has begun to flicker. Often, I’m like the first guy in this old joke.

A rich guy approaches another rich guy at their exclusive club and asks if he might catch a ride home because his Rolls is in the shop. On the way home, the first leans over and innocently asks, “What’s that.”

“The tachometer.”

“OK, and what’s that?”

“The light indicating I need an oil change. Say,” the driver says, “I thought you’d ridden in a Rolls before?”

“I have, but never in the front seat.”

Subtlety is the name of competition at my age. One night when my wife finished brushing and flossing her teeth before I did, I laid her flannel nightie out in the guest bedroom. I jest, of course, but if winning is the saccharine on the wedding cake, and losing is the toothpick the baker forgot, I think I’ll have some fruit. I don’t like beating someone, nor do I like to lose, so I Frisbee with my wife, and as we toss, we schmooze.