Why Do I Hate to Lose?
My nearly pathological need to win, and other odd personality traits
I need to win! Win at anything and everything, I don’t know why I need to win but I do. When I say that I need to win, I mean at everything I could possible view as a contest of any sort. I want to win at darts, trivia, video games, a made up game, like trying to bounce a tennis ball into a bucket, anything you can think of, and I want the teams I root for to win as well. Part of it, is some overwhelming need to belong, but I want to win Solitaire or Mine Hunter as well. This character flaw has been with me as long as I can remember and while it isn’t something that ruins my day to day life, it can be a source of conflict. The rational part of my brain doesn’t like it but apparently doesn’t have the power or the will to change it.
I don’t cheat to win but I will play a video game on a difficulty level lower than I should, to make sure I win. I don’t bet on anything, especially if I want to win (see below). I don’t throw a temper tantrum when I lose, because losing has been a long-running theme in my life. I mean, I root for the Detroit Tigers (two World Series wins in my 54 years), L.A. Rams (two Super Bowl wins in my lifetime) and the Detroit Red Wings, the most successful team I root for (four Stanley Cups in my life), so I’m used to losing. I only played on one championship team growing up (T-Ball as a seven year old) and was never good enough to play sports in high school. My high school football team won the state championship my senior year, but I was just a fan, not one of the team. Most of my friends were in the marching band, which was one of the best in the state but I didn’t play an instrument. To make me feel better they called me an “honorary band member” but when they were on the field, I was not. To this day I will tout the skill and musical ability of that band. I don’t push my ultra-competitiveness on others, my son for example. As a baseball coach I do not preach a win at all costs attitude to my kids, in fact I always start the season with my Five Rules; 1: Have fun, 2: Play your hardest, 3: Be a good sport, 4: Be a good teammate, 5: Have fun. Yes, I know that have fun is on there twice but I think it is the most important thing for the kids to remember. I don’t know why I can’t follow my most important rule but I do not have fun when my summer baseball team lost in the championship game each of the last three years. I’m the first one to congratulate the other team but I will retreat into my little world of depression for at least 24 hours, and everyone arounds me knows to leave me alone and not talk about it until I bring up the game.
I don’t brag too often about my abilities since I’m not really all that talented, I’m “OK” in a lot of things but there is only one thing I’m really good at. That is my ability to remember useless trivia. Sometimes I even amaze myself with my ability to recall some obscure fact I heard about Pope Stephen VI or the Fossa (I’m not going to explain them, just look them up.). This summer, the hotel where I work had a team trivia night. There were seven teams of five people and me on my own. Every team had to have a name and my “team” name was WDCK (What Does Chris Know). Not only did I win, but it wasn’t even close. I didn’t get every question right, but I got more than enough right. There were a few question where I was the only one to get it right. One of those questions was “Where is the largest herd of wild camels in the world?” One, might think the answer would be Saudi Arabia, and one would be wrong. That was the answer that all the other teams had, but I knew that Australia has a very large desert in the middle of the continent and I also knew that camels had been imported to assist with moving into the interior. Some of those camels escaped and enough of them lived to form a feral herd. That herd is now over a million camels strong and could double in size every nine years. In an effort at transparence, I knew about the camels but I had to look up how many there were for this post.
Along with my all-encompassing need to win and my strange trivia powers, is the the level of superstitiousness I feel. Again, my rational brain knows that what I do, outside of actual coaching, will have no effect on any game, but if my summer baseball team is winning, I won’t wash my jersey, shorts or socks. I will drive the same way to the field, get there at the same time and try to keep as much of my routine the same as I can. I will sit in the same place in the dugout and I will NEVER talk about the fact that we might be winning. If the Tigers are winning I’ll wear the same hat every day but even if they were undefeated I would never bet on them because that would be the ultimate in bad luck. If I bet that the sun was going to rise in the morning, that would be the night the world ended. Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the things I have to do to get a win but here are a few specific examples of this ridiculous phenomenon.
In the mid-90’s I was in a co-ed bowling league with my sister, her husband and my girlfriend. I am not a great bowler, I had a 145 average, used a lane ball and rented shoes. One night I started off with a nine and a spare in the first frame and then proceeded to throw seven strikes in a row. After I got four strikes, I would throw the ball turn around walk back to my table and sit down, never looking at the scoreboard. After I got five strikes, my girlfriend started to say “look at your score” but I cut her off yelling “don’t tell me” and ended up moving to a table by myself. My streak ended in the tenth frame with another nine. As I was getting ready for the spare, my brother-in-law, who has multiple 300 games to his name, came up behind me and said “If you get this and get a strike on your last ball you’ll have a 269”. I knew right there I was going to miss because he jinxed me. Of course that is exactly what happened I missed and ended up with a personal best score of 257, beating him in that game.
In 2002 when the Red Wings were in the playoffs, I sat in the same spot in front of my TV, I had a can of Pepsi and two Burrito Supremes from Taco Bell which I also put in the same place on the floor. I made sure that everything was in the same place by not vacuuming that section of my carpet from April until June so I could see my butt print and the marks made by my plate and can of pop. I also had to wear jeans for them to win. By the time of the Stanley Cup final between the Wings and the Carolina Hurricanes it was June and hot in my un-air conditioned apartment and I didn’t want to wear jeans. Game 3 of the final saw the series tied at one game apiece and regulation ending tied at two goals apiece. There I am watching this exciting game in my shorts and the first overtime period ends with the score still tied. As the second overtime period went on I started to think that I was going to need to put on jeans but I was comfortable in my shorts. When that period ended tied as well, I remember yelling at the TV “Fine, I’ll put on pants!” which I did. The third overtime period started with me sitting in my spot, sweating in my jeans. It took a bit, but the Red Wings scored at 14:47 of the third overtime period. I rejoiced and then quickly changed back into shorts. Luckily, I only had to wear jeans two more times as the Wings took the Cup in Game 5. My silly superstitions are not just related to sports, they’re present in every aspect of my life. At work, I always go through the same doors, I knock on wood if someone says it has been slow. I only step on the white marble tile in the lobby, not the brown tiles that mark the tile/carpet boundary. However, I’m not cursed with every single superstition, I’m not afraid of black cats or the number 13, but I won’t walk under a ladder or open an umbrella inside. I’m ok with a broken mirror but won’t take a breath when going by a cemetery. I find it quite ridiculous, but I do it just in case, because you never know. Once again, my rational brain knows it’s a bunch of baloney but I seem to do it anyway.
Thankfully, I only have one real phobia and it isn’t one that affects my daily life very often and it is one that I can actually overcome. I don’t like to drive over bridges. This is called Gephyrophobia, gephyra is Latin for bridge. The reasons I don’t like bridges is that I feel like I’m going to drive off the edge into the abyss below. It’s not overwhelming, I drive over bridges every time I go on a long trip, but I really don’t like it. Now, I’m not talking about the little bridge over a culvert or even a highway overpass but big bridges where there is a long drop if you drive off. The best example of the kind of bridge I hate, is the Zilwaukee bridge that spans the Saginaw River in Michigan. Every time I want to go downstate I have to cross that bridge and I hate it. When they built the bridge, they started from both sides of the river but when they got to the middle one side was three feet too far left and two feet too low, so they added a section to fill the gap. To me, that just says structural integrity issues. On top of that it is 125 feet over the river for no good reason. I don’t avoid the bridge, I just get really nervous driving over it. My son thinks it’s really funny and will remind me that it’s coming up because he like to see me white-knuckle it over the bridge. I have driven over that bridge dozens of times but it gets me every time. I have driven over the Mackinac Bridge a few times and I always drive over the grated section.
I do that for two reasons; one, to prove that I can do it and two, because it is farther from the edge. I know that all these things might make me look weak but I’m sure that we all have weird quirks of our personalities and I think it is better to talk about them.
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Haha