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Bob
Batz
Read Bob's bio and previous columns
September 1, 2008
My Life as a Loser
I
read a newspaper story the other day about a man named Brian “Young Gun”
Krause who recently out-spit his father Rich “Pellet Gun” Krause to
claim his seventh victory at the International Cherry Pit Spitting
Championship at Eau Claire, Michigan.
Krause’s winning spit was 56 feet, 7 1/2 inches. His dad’s spit
traveled 56 feet, 1”.
All I can say to Rich Krause is, “You lucky duck!” I say that because
I’ve never been what you would call a “winner.”
It
isn’t that I haven’t tried to be competitive during my 68-plus years on
this planet. I try, but I never come out on top in any competition.
My
first real taste of losing while others were winning came when I was a
fourth-grader at Oak Street Elementary School in Flint, Michigan. My
teacher – Miss Pritchett, who smelled like moth balls and always wore
her hair in a bun – staged a spelling bee in her class.
I
finished 23rd in the contest.
The sad thing about that was there were only 19 kids in the class.
That setback, I believe, set the stage for my lifetime of losing.
In
the game “Red Rover, Come Over” I was always the first player eliminated
from the competition. The same was true for childhood games like marbles
and Pom Pom Pullaway.
Whenever I played hide ’n’ seek, I was first player found.
Like I said, I never won at anything.
In
my grade school there was spirited competition among the students to be
chosen to clean erasers on the fire escape. My friend David Carswell was
chosen to clean erasers four times in a single week. I was never chosen
to clean erasers.
Ditto for school piano recitals and parts in school plays.
Looking back, I realize my ill-fortunes in grade school were merely
previews of my competitive fortunes the rest of my life. Over the years,
I’ve come up a loser in all sorts of competitions, including putting
contests, carnival ring-toss games, Monopoly, elementary school track
and field events, fishing tournaments, horseshoe games, pie-eating
contests, basketball free-throw contests, five-card-stud poker games
and track meets.
The closest I ever came to winning was when I competed in a fifth-grade
spelling bee. I almost came up a winner when the field of spellers was
narrowed to two – me and Wendell Snodgrass, the smartest kid in our
class. My heart was thumping as we entered the final round of
competition. There we were, Wendell and me, standing there before the
entire class with our hands trembling, our hearts thumping and our knees
shaking.
Then it happened. Wendell was given his word by the teacher. The word
was “rabbit” and he spelled it correctly.
Then it was my turn. And, like always, it happened.
As
Wendell stood there smiling triumphantly from ear to ear, the teacher
said “All right, Robert, please spell “ridiculous.”
I
shook my head and shuffled back to my desk.
Contact Bob at
bbatz@woh.rr.com
© 2008
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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