Skip to main content

18th Place

A college friend of mine posted a picture on Facebook this week. It showed an award ribbon that boasted, "18th Place." 
This 18th Place award comes courtesy of the 97th Annual Pennsylvania Farm Show in Harrisburg.
Now, I've not been to the Farm Show.  I imagine it to be somewhat bigger than the Washington County Fair that I went to every August. 
Sidenote: smelly farm animals + humid August = ick. Though they do have the very best homemade lemonade there.

I'm not sure what all goes on, but isn't an award for 18th place a little much?
"Is it really necessary?"  is what he captioned his picture with. 
Here's my comment:
"Yes. Because everyone is a winner. Welcome to 2013 in the USA where there are no losers."

And this is the reasoning that has granted us the people who audition on American Idol that cannot sing. Instead of having winners and losers we now have a place where everyone can feel special and important. 

Sorry to break it to you, kids, but there are winners and there are losers. It's a part of life, and if I'm being honest here, we are all winners and losers. There are some things that you're good at and other things that you aren't. It's called life. And life doesn't have to play fair.

I'm a winner at sales. I'm a loser as a secretary.
I'm a winner at baking. I'm a loser at decorating.
I'm a winner at....hmmm, can't think of anything else but I'm sure there's more. 
I'm also a loser at a lot more things too. In fact, I'm probably more of a loser than a winner overall if we add up every little aspect in life.

But I'm good with that. And the reason I'm okay with it is because when I grew up in  the 70s and 80s we had winners and we had losers. 
It helps build character.

Comments

  1. I heard a story on the Today Show that there is a movement, mostly among women, of "self acceptance" spreading in the US. No need to improve, or admit that we actually need to work in a certain area and strive to become better, more fit, more healthy, etc. Healthy competition and self motivation promotes discipline and striving to become the best at whatever we do. If we constantly work towards being our best, we will never settle with less. A family game night helps in our family...seriously! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I agree 100%!! I try to teach my students that not everyone wins all the time, and that some of us are better at things than others. I don't think we're doing our children any favors by teaching them otherwise. In the real world, they will lose, fail, and not everyone will be nice to them. Life isn't always easy, and telling them otherwise sets them up for an even bigger failure!

    P.S. it was nice to talk with you last night! Thank you for the advice! :)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kitchen floor woes

I spent a better part of this afternoon lamenting how much I hate my kitchen floor. It puzzles me as to why anyone would install such flooring. Not only is it ugly, but also impractical. It also puzzles me as to why, after nearly nine years in this house, I still have this floor. Well. It doesn't puzzle me that much ($$$). I clean it only once a year.  Don't judge,  I Swiffer and spot clean in between. And I have a dog who does her share of, ahem , cleaning it.  But see all of those deep grout lines? Scrubbing around each brick tile and into those lines is beastly. It's much harder than getting foundation out of the lines on my face. Douse with cleaner. Scrub with rough sponge. Wipe with cloth rag. Rinse with rag. Rinse again in between each brick tile until it's done. Roughly two hours of scrubbing and rinsing. Similar process to removing makeup, but much more labor intensive.  Yes, I could use a mop but scrubbing...

Front Row Seat

  If you've been around me any length of time, you'll know I love having a front row seat when possible. Church. Concerts. Comedy shows. Auctions. I want to be front and center, where the action is, so I don't get distracted and miss something. I want to be part of the event and front is where it's at.  Lately I've had a front row seat to some things that I wish I could unsee. My mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis and the last year and a half of watching her slow and steady decline into a world of unknowns has taken a toll.  I tend to hold every emotion inside. Always have. I've learned -these past fifteen months or so- that this is bad for my health. Stress levels are impacting how I feel. Palpitations, and a diagnosis of "harmless" PACs, have left me trying to manage this stress. It's gotten easier but, I'll admit, I still have things shoved down inside. And then along came CDH. A diagnosis I'd not heard of before it was given to...

Sweet Zoey

 Zoey - August 10, 2020 When we found her I didn't realize I needed her. Sure, she needed us, she was living in woods, alone, surviving on whatever she could find. She was nine months old, the vet later told me when I took her in for a check-up, still unsure I wanted to keep this undernourished mutt. We'd been on vacation in southwest Missouri, near the Arkansas border, in the middle of the woods. I was on the porch when I saw her trotting down the dirt road. A little brown dog. I whistled and she stopped to look at me from across the lawn. Then she continued on her way. Later that night, the family was watching a movie we'd brought (no cable service out there!) and suddenly this furry face popped up in the window, scaring my husband out of his seat. We fed her some people food and went to bed.  She was still there in the morning. We asked around and no one knew where she came from. We fed her some more and she stayed. The next day we went and bought some dog food, f...