The unintentional winner

By Michael Becker — January 19, 2009 — In response to the Winning and Losing nudge

I hate los­ing. I don’t hate it so much as I used to, but then again, I don’t lose often now, so it’s hard to say whether my reac­tion to los­ing has soft­ened over the years or whether I just enjoy the nov­elty of los­ing from time to time. Read more

Football Club — Fight Club

By Justin Wayne — January 18, 2009 — In response to the Winning and Losing nudge

Groups of human beings get­ting together whether it be at work, play, on the field (pitch, here in Eng­land), or at a bar (pub — Eng­land) the ten­dency for com­pe­ti­tion exists. The sec­ondary Eng­lish school I cur­rently attend for the reg­u­lar 9–5 employ­ment is no dif­fer­ent. In an attempt to social­ize with my new cowork­ers in this stranger-than-I-ever-thought-possible coun­try I began attend­ing the Fri­day foot­ball (for those Amer­i­cans read­ing: soc­cer.) Read more

Lost and Found

By Susan Andrus — January 18, 2009 — In response to the Winning and Losing nudge

There is, of course, no win­ning when a friend dies. There is only loss. Last March I lost a good friend. It was unfair and too soon.

Sam was occa­sion­ally a trou­ble­some friend to have; he didn’t always take care of him­self very well, he could be eas­ily offended, and he had a habit of slip­ping back into old habits. I often found myself wor­ry­ing about him, I hated it, but he was also an enthu­si­as­ti­cally cre­ative, lov­ing and sup­port­ive friend. I don’t think Sam loved any­thing more than mak­ing someone’s day. He went out of his way to do kind things, whether it was lend­ing some­one a book he thought they might like or recruit­ing a friend for an emer­gency, mid­night road trip to reach another friend in need. He was an excep­tional per­son and after a decade of friend­ship I couldn’t help but love him. He was, and is, a valu­able part of my life.

Read more

winning and losing?

By Laura Jean Stypka — January 14, 2009 — In response to the Winning and Losing nudge

Most of my youth was spent in com­pet­i­tive sports.  Early on it was gym­nas­tics that took over my home­work hours.  By mid­dle school though, it finally dawned on me that I would never be in the Olympics.  A: I wasn’t that good… I mean, I was in com­pe­ti­tions that weren’t very hard and I still couldn’t get a phe­nom­e­nal score.  B: By age 11 I should have been work­ing with a per­sonal gym­nas­tics train­ing coach if I wanted to make it to the big times.  Unfor­tu­nately my par­ents did not agree that this was a wise use of their money. Read more