to the death
There’s been much copy written about the last labour government’s farcical opposition to any level of childhood sporting competition on the grounds that it unfairly discriminated against the unfit and non-sporty. I personally remember a conversation I had with a prospective infants’ school headmistress where she described in great detail how she taught the children ‘the skill of how to kick a ball and the skill of how to hit a ball with a bat but that these skills would never be used in a competitive situation.’ Three guesses as to whether or not Tom went to that school!
When you have a mo, go watch a group of kids in the playground and it won’t be too long before you see them devise some form of contest and competition is devised – football, stone-kicking, jumping the farthest, skipping the fastest. Hopefully, you’ll see this before you’re rightly questioned about your recent tendency for loitering around school fields with a bag of mint imperials on too obvious display! Line the kids up for a race and you’ll witness a level of commitment to win shown of late only by Usain Bolt. Like it or not we’re born to compete and the last to the mammoth feast can expect the grisly bits no-one else wants (which reminds me of the joke about the starving ‘Liver’pool, ‘Hart’lepool and Man’chest’er fans in the desert, who come across a recently deceased camel. Needless to say the ‘Arse’nal fan wasn’t hungry).
As grown-ups, and I use that term lightly, most of us don’t win or lose in our normal waking hours. Even in summer as our inhibitions recede with the inevitable quest for the ultimate beach-body, exercise, more than not, remains a solitary sprint on the jogging machine or an extra session on the Wii in the comfort of your own living room (and only when everyone else is out and the curtains are tightly drawn). At work, imagine if your salary review debate were settled by clearing a space between the desks for a spot of Cumberland wrestling. You know that promotion that you and the other account manager are angling for? Well, it’s all on who’s first to HQ, up and down the eight flights of stairs and back again. Ready. Steady. Go. At home, cutting comments about the ironing rarely degenerate to a no-holds-barred arm wrestle where the winner takes all.
We all judge and, in turn, are judged, but generally it is a matter of opinion, of subjectivity rather than an objective cast-iron incontrovertible truth. We forget the frustration, humiliation and ignominy of physically failing, of realising that your opponent can run faster, and longer, can jump higher, and farther, and you will very soon be tasting the bitter tang of defeat as his heels skip over that finishing line in front of you. By a country mile.
