Sore Loser? Moi?

The BBC News website this morning reports that, according to a recent survey of 8-16 year olds and their parents, we are a nation of sore losers. What constitutes a good loser? Is it simply a case of hiding your disappointment?

Like most people, I think, I would like to consider myself humble in victory and gracious in defeat, but I know the man would beg to differ.

A few weeks ago he suggested a games night; the Wii or board games? My ears pricked up at the suggestion of board games, how about Monopoly? He was surprised. I have always refused to play Monopoly with him because it has a tendency to bring out a fierce aggression in me, rarely seen when sober. However, given that we had never played it together in our whole 12 year history, it seemed safe to give it a go. Boy, was I wrong.

The very second he rolled the dice and bought the first property he landed on, a station, I could feel my skin crawling with tension and gritted my teeth while he cheerfully explained he never usually bothers with the stations. Fast forward 1 hour and he has more money than he can spend. I have very little money in the bank and despite owning Park Lane and Mayfair, with houses on both, when I land on one of his greens with a hotel I say "That's it, you win." 

"But you haven't even counted your money, or you could sell some stuff?" He says kindly. 

"Nope it wouldn't be worth it, I'd still lose. Anyway, for the last half an hour I've just been waiting for a point when I could say you have won and you have now, OK? That was so boring, I don't know why we even bothered playing it in the first place. You can tidy it up. I'm putting the telly on." With a barely audible harumph, I put my feet up and proceed to ignore him for the next 15 minutes. Yep, I'm definitely a sore loser when it comes to Monopoly.

Last year at my son's preschool sports day I was talking to some of the other mums and was surprised to learn that often sports days now consist of uncompetitive games, standing around throwing balls to one another, giving the children a chance to do sport without having winners and losers. This all seems so tame, and frankly a bit soft. As much as I hated sports a child, I like to think it was character building. Quite what character it built I don't know, but it's one of those sayings us parents like to use along the same vein as "you kids have it so easy these days" and "you don't know you are born Mister", all of which can be roughly translated as: I had to do it, so why shouldn't you?

As a total under achiever in the PE department, the sports days of my youth were bone chillingly terrifying. There was nothing more humiliating on this earth than gullumping over the finish line last, bright red and sweating buckets, only to find the rest of the competitors were already chatting to their friends and checking their make up, barely a hint of sweat at their brow. Swimming galas were just as bad. I was in my local swimming club which gave me a perceived degree of proficiency (which I was most definitely not worthy of), and therefore was often asked to participate in the back stroke race. No one ever wants to do the back stroke race, because the same thing happens to everyone (OK maybe just me, but humour me here, I would like to come out of this blog post with a teeny bit of dignity). The whistle blows and you start furiously wind-milling your arms and kicking your legs imagining the crowd excitedly cheering your name and picturing the glory of reaching the other side first, only to find yourself 3 minutes later having gone diagonally across the pool, bashed your head on the tiled side, no where near the finish line, with everyone pointing and laughing at you. Getting out of the pool to find your swimming costume has gone completely see through in front of the whole school does not help the situation.

Maybe these experiences of my childhood have made me less competitive, I have a kind of "Well I'll do it but just so everyone knows, I'm going to lose" attitude to most games. Because lets face it, there's nothing worse than really trying to win something only to lose. 

The man is highly competitive, though he will dispute that until he's blue in the face. The smug satisfaction on his face of being pretty good at most things is enough to drive me to distraction, and has contributed to more than a few arguments. I don't consider myself a sore loser, but in the face of a self-satisfied winner I have a tendency to get a well-timed headache or attack of PMS.

Maybe it's not a case of us being sore losers. Maybe it's that we are becoming more arrogant winners. Competitiveness can lead to great ambition which I am all for, but repeatedly winning can make people conceited. So maybe the focus should be on making us more gracious winners. My son has a current obsession with being the winner. Whether it's finishing his dinner first, or being the first one out of the door (usually pushing me and his little brother out of the way to get there) he can't wait to cry out triumphantly "I won! I'm the winner! Ha, ha, you LOST!" I have tried to encourage him to be less competitive and stop seeing life as a constant race or competition but as yet, I am failing. Maybe it's a boy thing. But I do get drawn into the competition just by his very smugness, I have found myself responding by saying things like "Yeah but you cheated" and "Look, its not a race OK?" Maybe a better mum would allow him his glory.

One look at any parents race at any sports day, at any school anywhere in the world, and you can see the people who are there for the win. Some of them even wear special trainers and tracky b's to give them the edge over us less prepared mums who have arrived in flip flops and jeans. The whistle blows and it's elbows out, trying to get a head start. My first ever parents race I came second to last, but I wasn't even trying to win so that's OK, alright?

I don't want to be a sore loser, but I would much less like to be an arrogant winner. I find the best way to avoid being a sore loser is to not compete in the first place (a tactic which I have grown accustomed to using), which is surely defeating the whole point? If you care about winning something you're going to be upset if you lose. And if you win, you have every right to be happy about it. Maybe pointing at someone and saying "Ha ha, loser" is taking a bit far but where is the line between healthy competition and smugness? And for those of us used to losing at pretty much everything from a young age, it makes no difference whether the winner is gracious, frankly they're all arrogant gits. But bravo to them. Really. The smug, self-satisfied, arrogant, conceited...