GRUMPY
The High Cost of Losing
Thanks, but Honorable Mention is still not winning.
I “won” honorable mention in a contest recently, and, like sore losers everywhere, I’m disgruntled.
Honorable mention is code for, “You lost, but not as badly as other people lost. In fact, you almost won, which is still losing, but you should be happy you came so close! In fact, if that one other person hadn’t entered — she missed the deadline, or was one word over the cutoff, or was too depressed to hit the ‘send’ button, or had cholera—you would be the winner right now instead of her! Isn’t that great!!?”
I was never a good loser, which explains the gaping hole in my high school resume where all the sports should be. I was a brain, not a jock. I only wanted to participate in things where I knew I could decimate my competition. Not just win, but grind them into the dirt and then expel some sort of bodily fluid on them.
Nothing has changed. I haven’t “grown” or “matured”. All the intervening years of losing have possibly made me even worse at it.
So to compensate, I sometimes enter small contests where I know I’m head and shoulders, and even torso above the competition. I’m a ringer.
