It’s time for yet another installment of Search Terms of the Sad and Desperate, where I offer advice to visitors whose search terms hit my blog. Today’s topic: “Life is not a competition.”
Au contraire. Everything is a competition.
I think most of us accept that humans have always competed at the most basic level for sustaining items like food, shelter, or mates. But when you become a parent, you realize that as a species, we are meant to compete for everything, and that sibling rivalry is a manifestation of survival of the fittest.
My children compete for all-important things like:
- The chicken breast with the fewest grill marks.
- The front passenger seat. (I have seen them nearly come to blows over this one.)
- The best seat for viewing the TV.
- Junk food, should there be any in the house. (They will even unabashedly steal this from each other and then deny it in the face of overwhelming evidence.)
- Who had the best grades/at bat/season.
- Who had the worst day/teacher/bout of strep.
And the list goes on. Feel free to add to it.
As a parent, my role seems to be to vindicate whichever party gets to me first and/or award privileges based on completely arbitrary criteria. The loser just has to take their lumps.
I figure it’s good preparation for their later life in the workplace.
Read the series:
Anxiety dreams involving my kids
How do I talk to my surly teen?
I have only one child but laundry and housework never end
A disclaimer: While it perhaps shouldn’t need saying, let me remind you that I have no credentials, training or certifications of any kind that would qualify me to mete out advice to anyone. This is a humor blog. If you don’t find it funny, well, that’s another issue.
It ate my comment!
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What did? Wherever did it go?
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Not sure! It was a long one about sibling rivalry and this morning I can’t remember it. I was remembering how my sister and I still fought at twenty-something.
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Maybe you dreamed it (see post #1 about anxiety dreams).
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Oh. True. Good point 🙂
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