Participant Ribbons

 You might think that after all these years of teaching PE at an elementary school that I would learn my lesson. One of the things that was stressed for all those years by various and sundry clinics and trainings was that cooperative games are the key to a happy playground. Any game that ends in a winner or a loser will ultimately set you back. All that talk about "who won" will take away valuable instruction time and gnaw away at fragile egos. 

I also know that while I tend to finish each class with the question, "Who had fun?" then insisting that those are the kids who won, this is never satisfying for any child old enough to play Sharks and Minnows. Finding yourself "out" in four square, or trailing in the last leg of the egg relay race can be a soul-crushing experience for an eight year old.  Being on the losing kickball team? You might as well stay out on the playground and wait for the rest of fourth grade to forget.

But they never will. 

At least that's how grade school kids feel. Which explains why after ten minutes playing any game imaginable, a few of them will start to complain that a few of their playmates are cheating. For them, this can be the only possible explanation for the reason they are not able to catch the foam rubber balls being tossed across the yard. Cheating tends to be the best possible way to define the line between winning and losing. There is none. There is only winning and cheating. We try and mediate their bitter disappointments by offering them a solution: Rock, Paper, Scissors. As resolutions go, this works pretty well, but the tough nuts will still complain that even that game is fixed in everyone else's favor. 

You don't have to wonder too long about where these kids might have acquired this world view. One need only to look at the election coverage over the past few years to witness a group of sore losers like the playground could hardly imagine. The votes weren't counted right. The votes came from dead people. The wrong paper was used. All the efforts to suppress minority voters didn't work. 

Oops. That last one just snuck in there. Mostly, they agree with the nine year old who cannot fathom how they could possibly have been caught in Capture The Flag. They insist on the ultimate in universe expansion: the Do Over. The Orange One, who has lost the popular vote in both of the elections in which he has participated, cannot conceive how anyone could get fewer votes when they have been personally selected by his tiny hands. It's actually becoming more and more clear that on the whole people just don't like this guy or the people he recommends. It's not a matter of cheating. Plain and simple, it's a popularity contest and he's just not that popular. 

I know. I see you shaking your head. Hard to believe, isn't it? But maybe the truth lies more in the fact that these grownups are imitating the behavior of children. That seems to make more sense to me. Maybe the next election will be conducted by and for adults. 

I wonder if we could settle Georgia with Rock, Paper, Scissors?