February 21, 2015
Dear Emily,
Snow, ice, freezing rain,
and unusually low temperatures have kept most of Tennessee homebound for this
entire week. Schools have been
closed all week, state and local offices have not opened on more than one day;
even malls and some online stores have had to close their businesses for a
period of time because their employees were unable to drive on the dangerously
slick roads. Since the adults in
your life are all teachers (except for Pap and he’s retired!), you and Simon
have enjoyed lots of parental time:
movies, books, games, and yesterday, you were able to scrape up enough
snow to shape a small snowman. Fun times!
Mixed in with all that home time, you have had some BB time as well, and
that’s always a good thing!
So, this week I decided
to teach you how to play Dominoes – a modified version: not to make points, but just to match
up the dots. Since my set of
dominoes has all black and white tiles, unlike the color set that I played with
as a child, you actually had to match the number of dots. You caught on to the game
quickly: choose five tiles; find
the tile with the highest number of double numbers, and start the game. Our only goal was to see who could “go out” first. I did not cut you any slack. I won the first game. So we played again. This time, it seemed that I couldn’t
get any tiles to match up, and I had to keep drawing tiles from the “bone pile”
until I had quite a collection on my side. You used all of your dominoes in five turns and won the
second game! After I applauded
your success, I pointed out that since you had won a game and I had won a game,
we were tied, and that we would need to play again to determine the winner. You thought about that suggestion for
just a second and then said “BB, let’s just play as a team and then we both
win.” And that’s just what we
did.
Competition is
good. Competition builds character. Competition teaches life lessons about how
to be thrilled yet gracious when winning, and how to handle the disappointment
of losing with dignity and grace. Frankly,
healthy competition makes life more interesting and more fun. I hope you will be a tough competitor
when the time comes, and that you will NEVER be satisfied with losing. This week, in your three-year-old
wisdom, you figured out a way to emerge a
winner: let’s be a team and nobody
loses. It’s not a logic that the world
will agree with nor cater to; nor is it realistic. I’m pretty sure that someday you will
beat my socks off at Dominoes – repeatedly. But this
week – we are both winners, and that works for me!
Love, BB
