Who's Your Competition?

When I was a kid working in my dad's pizza shop, I had two main duties:

1. Bus the tables
2. Bag the breadsticks

Busing the tables .... ick. If the tables were a mess, my dad would press a button in the front of the shop three times and it would make a noise in the back. It was really annoying:
BZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Bus .... The .... Front!

In the back room, my job was to take the crispy breadsticks out of the huge paper bag, and place them two at a time in the small glassine bags, fold the little bags, staple them, and put the breadsticks in a container so they'd be ready to go out with the "to go" spaghetti, ravioli and lasagna orders.

The job could be a bore, so I made a game out of it. I'd keep tabs on how long it took me to finish bagging one huge bag of breadsticks. I'd just try to get faster and faster and faster.

Later, when I worked in the Children's Room of our public library, we had a check-out system where we'd take a photo of each book label along with a card showing a check-out number and the due date. One of my jobs was to stamp the due date on the big stacks of cards. Tedious work.

Again, I made a game out of it and became one of the fastest stampers on the staff.

In general, I'm not a gal that enjoys competition. When I stack myself up against others, I lose too often. But I love being in competition with myself. Then I can see when I get better and better.

An example now is in my weight loss program. I weigh myself each morning so that the number on the scale is just that — a number — a score. Each time it's lower than the day before, I do a happy dance, call my husband at work and cry, "I got a new low score!"

It's a lot like golf. You really are playing against yourself, knowing your own handicap.