You probably didn't know...

but I was once a world champion.  It's a bit of a misnomer, but true.  Back in 1986, I was stationed at Nellis Air Force Base in the Las Vegas, NV area.  Our base bowling team got to go to the Worldwide Military Bowling Championships.  Mostly because it was held in Las Vegas that year.  Calling it Worldwide is kind of inaccurate because no other nation's military were invited to participate.  But teams did travel there from around the world to compete, so in a way it was an accurate label.

To say that my team dominated would be to understate.  There were five different competitions.  Singles and Doubles, in which all participants bowled four games.  Team event in which each team's six players bowled eight games.  Those 16 games were totaled up for each individual in the individual all-events competition and again for each team in the team all-events.  We won the team event, the team all-events, my partner and I won the doubles event and my partner won the singles event.  We won four of the five events.  Winning the team all-events made us world champions. 

So why is it that after the tournament was over, I quickly stopped revelling in our victories and instead was all focused on why I didn't perform better?  I was actually upset with myself.  I averaged nearly 210 over 16 games.  I didn't win any award for it and in the end I wasn't pleased with myself. 

That's the nature of being intensely competitive.  It's why I don't bowl anymore.  It isn't recreational to engage in a sport in which I was once able to compete at the highest levels.  I'm not bragging, I'm stating a fact.  In 1980 I met the requirements to join the Professional Bowler's Association, including the written recommendations of two current PBA members.  I just never did the paperwork because there was no way I'd leave the military to do something so speculative.  I will say that it was the improvements and changes in technology in bowling that makes it no fun anymore and there is some truth in that.  But it is also true that I simply can't engage in it because to do so would remind me of what I was once capable of and can't do anymore.

Even if I weren't broken physically in a number of ways, I couldn't do what I once did.  I ran through a long mental checklist before taking each shot.  I had studied everything there was to know about the sport.  And that's not true of just bowling.  Or just sports.  When I was in the military I played a lot of what's called "G.I. Pinochle".  You take two decks of pinochole cards, take all of the nines out and you're left with one deck of 80 cards.  When I played it, I could count all 80 cards, by suit.  I knew how many "point" cards my partner and I had earned in each hand befoe we counted the ones in front of us.  Even when we were playing just for fun on lunch breaks I hated losing.  If it was just for fun, why did we keep score? 

Today, there aren't a lot of things I can compete at and so I'm even more insanely intensive about competing and it has to stop.  It isn't healthy.  I can rationalize that it isn't all my fault.  From my earliest memories I recall my father teaching me that second place was first loser.  My dad loved to win.  My dad lived to win.  At everything.  Recreational skiing was a challenge to see who could successfully nagivate a black-diamond run first.  He quit bowling with me before my 13th birthday because I'd done what he couldn't do (bowl a game over 200).  He got angry with me when we were on a road trip with a friend/business client of his and I beat them both at poker, even though I was still a teenager.  He quit playing tennis with me when I started winning most of the time.  So it isn't like I learned to be so competitive without influences, or encouragement. 

However, it's unfair to lay the majority of the blame on him.  I had choices and I made them.  Now I have to choose to learn how to recreate more and compete less.  Competing is fine in some things.  In trying to get better.  In trying to improve my knowledge.  But not in what are supposed to be fun trivia games.  Yes there are prizes and yes I want to win.  I just plan to tone it down a bit.  Or at least I will try.  Perhaps recognizing that I can't win this as a competition is the first step.