TITLE: Feeling Incompetent
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 30, 2008  9:47 AM
DESC: 
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BODY:
My daughters received a new game from their mom for
Christmas.  It's called Apples to Apples.  Each round,
one of the players draws a card with an adjective on
it.  The rest of the players choose noun cards from
their hands that match the adjective.  The judge
chooses one of the nouns as the best match, and the
player who played it wins that round.  The objective
of the game is to win the most rounds.

I could tell you many things more about the game and
how it's played in my family, but there is really only
one thing to say:

I stink at this game.

If I am in a three-person game, I finish third.  Four
players?  Fourth.  You name the number of players,
and I can tell you where I'll finish.  Last.

It doesn't seem to matter with whom I play.  Recently,
I've been playing with my wife and daughters.  Last
night, my wife's brother joined us.  My wife and I
have played this game before, with friends from my
office.  The result is always the same.

My weakness may be heightened by the lobbying that
can be part of the game.  Players are allowed to try
to sell their answers to the judge.  I'm not a good
salesman and besides don't really like to sell.  But
that doesn't account for my losing.  If we play in
silence, I lose.

It's not that I'm bad at all word games.  I like
many word games and generally do well playing them.
If nothing else, I get better after I play a game
for a while, by figuring out something about the
strategy of the game and the players with whom I
play.  But in this game, the harder I try to play
well, the worse I seem to do.

This must be how students feel in class sometimes.
There is some consolation -- that I might become
more empathetic as a result of feeling this way
-- but, to be honest, it's just a bad feeling.
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