Matthew Girard: There\'s always a game going on in this household

Tag : household paper
Every thing is a competition in my household.

From video games to how much food we consume to how many bylines wehave in the paper, my two roommates and I are always looking todeclare a winner.

Maybe it's the fact that there are two sports writers in the houseor there is a subconscious "alpha-male" struggle between the threeof us, but the "competition" is never-ending. New people to ourgroup of friends often wonder if we even like each other because ofour competitive nature.

Despite our fervor for one-upping each other, our "competition"never involved anything remotely athletic – until lastThursday.

After learning there was an outdoor basketball court down thestreet, the decision was made that we should get more exercise.

Of course, what started out as just a way to be more active turnedinto our newest method of telling who is the king of the household.

After a short warm-up we commenced with a game of "21," and withoutsaying a word, our leisurely game to get some exercise turned intoa grudge match.

Although we were all woefully out of shape and eventually decidedto play to just "11," there were plenty of elbows, hard fouls andtrash-talking. Thankfully, with a drive into the middle of the laneand both roommates draped on me, I hit the layup to win our first"real" competition.

After hitting the layup, one roommate said, "Man, we should'vefouled him harder."

Even though we had just spent the last half-hour beating on eachother for supremacy of the house, we walked back to the house as aunit and with a sense of closeness.

What I learned from our new competition was that we need to investin an electronic scoreboard in our house to keep an on-going tallyof wins and that despite how much all three of us like to see eachother lose, I wouldn't want to be "competing" against anybody else.

Some people might think we are entirely too competitive and aregoing to wind up actually hurting each other, but without ourcompetitions our house would be boring.

Contact Matthew Girard at mgirard@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7569.