Do You Care If You Win or Lose?
Even though it is summer and all other extracurricular activities have been postponed, Shane still wants to play ping pong.
Shane has become so good at ping pong in the last nine months that none of us can beat him anymore. When I play against him, I feel like I am a toddler playing against an Olympian. I have to stand waaaaaaay back from the table in order to reach the balls that he slams at me, and when I get a point it’s rarely because I have done well. Occasionally, Shane makes a mistake. And then, like any good mom, I cheer.
But Shane doesn’t want to play with me, if he can help it. He likes to go to the weekly league and play other people who also slam the ball across the table. Sometimes I take him to the league; more often, I decline.
I care too much about sports, apparently, to keep my mouth shut when the games are over. I love to watch him play, to slam that ball back and forth at his opponent. But I always get upset if he loses. I get particularly angry when someone cheats Shane out of a point – which happens more often than you would think – and when there’s no one standing next to him, telling him how wonderfully he plays.
Shane, however, doesn’t get upset. Or at least, he doesn’t appear to be upset. And because it matters so much to me, I asked him about his feelings.
“Do you care if you win or lose?” I asked him.
“Sometimes,” Shane said. “If I lose a bunch of matches that I should have won, I get really upset for about five minutes.”
“And then after five minutes, it just goes away? I mean, do you stuff it down or do you just not feel upset anymore?”
“Sometimes it’s ten minutes,” he said, always wanting to be quantitatively accurate. “But after that, I just don’t feel upset anymore.”
“I get really upset,” I told him. “Sometimes I am still thinking about it three days later, and I’m not even playing!”
“Yeah I know,” Shane said. “If you or Grandad take me, you guys will still be talking about ping pong way after I’ve stopped thinking about it.”
“Oh,” I said. “I thought I was being helpful.”
“Maybe you are but I just don’t really listen after those ten minutes,” he said, still wanting to be quantitatively accurate. “So when you guys take me, I always have to ask you to just stop talking. It’s better if Daddy takes me to ping pong because he doesn’t care at all.”
Shane’s father is rather uninterested in anything related to athletic competition.
“Okay,” I said, only half disappointed. When I don’t watch, I don’t get upset.
Not even for ten minutes.