I have my insecurities, but I manage to feel pretty much an equal partner to Sweet Hubby. He is a very intelligent, highly educated man. As I like to say, he has more degrees than a thermometer, while I am a college dropout. This is all well and good, because I'm smart and I know I'm smart and he knows I'm smart, so there is no sense of hierarchy or competition between us in that regard.
However, Sweet Hubby also has the infuriating trait of being good at just about everything he does, even when he's trying something for the first time. After he retired, he took ceramics classes, and our shelves immediately began being filled with the most beautiful plates and bowls. We took archery classes, and his arrows were tightly clustered almost from the first day, while I made a more normal progression of shooting wildly and then a bit less wildly. We played a game called Bananagrams once, a game of making words from lettered tiles. First time we played, first round, he made the word "volumetric". I come from a game playing family (Sweet Hubby does not), and in my family, we do love love love to win, so to be so thoroughly bested time and again is quite infuriating.
I was mentioning recently to SH that I thought I ought to be acknowledged for having a strong enough ego to stand tall next to him. I mentioned just a few of the dozens of activities at which he excels and I do not. He generously reminded me that I can beat the pants off him at Perquackey, one of my favorite games, in which a player makes as many words from lettered dice as possible in a short period of time. "Yes," I grumped back, "and you notice we never play Perquackey.
For that matter, no one will play Perquackey with me. I'm almost preternaturally good at it, so some family members have played with me a couple of time and then never again because what's the fun in knowing you're going to lose? (My sister did beat me once, years ago, and still holds it up as a shining moment in her life.) I love word games, and I love this particular game with a passion. Sometimes I play with myself just for the fun of it. But it's awfully frustrating that I have such a hard time getting anyone to play with me at the one thing I'm good at. (All right, that's an exaggeration, there are other things, but none of them are games.) I don't like this reputation of being a Perquackey genius. It scares people away and robs me of something I most especially enjoy.
I suppose I also don't relish the idea of playing a game or sport with someone I know is fifty times better at it than I am. And this makes me think that perhaps I should play with those folks so as not to rob them of their enjoyment of doing what they love and are good at. It's good ego management, after all, to do something for the challenge of it rather than the satisfaction of accomplishment. No way to get better at something without actually doing it, after all.
And, PS, last night Sweet Hubby played Perquackey with me in a most generous husbandly gesture. Of course I beat him by miles, and he was a really good sport about it. Didn't turn the table over or anything.
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