I’m in Jamaica on vacation. Specifically, I’m up at 4:00 AM on the balcony of our room eating nuts because I didn’t have anything to eat before I went to bed. At home, I have beans and rice before I go to bed and that keeps me full all night. On vacation, we eat and drink all day and that is usually more than enough to keep me asleep without being hungry. We ate at a Welcome Back dinner for return guests to the Couples Resorts. The food was fine and filling, but it wasn’t the normal gorge-fest of the previous meals. That is why I’m up at 4:00 in the morning (1 AM in back at home time) and eating unsalted nuts.
To be honest, I had a trauma yesterday helping me stay up. My wife and I were sitting at the swim-up bar drinking. One of the entertainment staff came up and asked if we wanted to play a game. My wife said yes without asking me. That would not have been my answer. The host of the games then said the phrase I have dreaded since the idea of playing games has come up in my married life. She said, “We’ll have the guys on this side and the women on the other side.” I don’t know if she actually said “guys”, but that is what the group of men surrounding me were. Beers in hand and the thrill of competition on their minds. “We” were a “team.” At no time did I feel part of them or their team. I gave an answer at one point, and no one responded to it. Someone repeated my answer, and they then accepted it as correct.
The women had their rounds, and everyone on the team contributed. They got more answers than the men most of the time. When I was younger, we played many games. I did the best when I wasn’t on an all-male team. They taught most men and boys to value winning through aggression. At this point in my life, the things I value the most are happiness and friendship. I was not friends with these other men, and I was not happy.
In the end, the men tied with the women, so we had a deciding round of questions between the teams. One team member would ask a question of a member of the other team. If they answered the question, their team would lose the game. They could only present a new question. It came down to my wife on the other team and she picked me to play the final round that would decide who was better (or whatever the winning team “won”). At first, I came back with a question of, “What are we doing here?” It was an honest question because I truly didn’t understand what was going on. We continued, and she asked me something and I came back with, “When is our anniversary?” I knew she wouldn’t be able to help herself in answering the question and the guys won the game.
In the back of my mind, I thought they biased this final round to the men because we are notoriously bad listeners. I walked back to my teammates, and they hoisted me on their shoulders, and we did a victory lap around the pool. Actually, what really happened is I walked back to the seat where I was sitting and had to push my way through. Someone was sitting at my seat, but someone politely told them I was sitting there. No one on my team said a word to me. Not only did they not congratulate me for helping them “win”, but they ignored me and scattered back to their wives and girlfriends to taunt them with their “win”.
Hopefully, this story shows you why I don’t like team sports. They throw a bunch of people together because they have penises or some other arbitrary reason. The only reason they are together is to win over other teams made up of other arbitrary players. Today, my team won, but I feel like it was a loss for my dignity. Only when I preyed on my wife’s vulnerabilities did I win in the eyes of the game players. As the computer in War Games said, “The best move is not to play.”
Future note: This writing in the early AM hours thing is not new for me. It was the first time I did it on vacation in Jamaica, though. I usually have story ideas running around in my head that I need to let out before I can sleep. On this occasion, I had to get the trauma of competition out of my head. I’ve said it before and here I go again. Competition ruins everything.
Thoughts from Life 
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