Foosball Frustrations

The company I work for recently had a change in presidents and ever since the change, things around the office have become a lot more relaxed: there are a lot more funny e-mails circulating the office, when the president takes our department out to lunch it turns into lunch and the video arcade, and in the office we now have a love sac in front of the plasma TV, a putt returner, and a foosball table.

The office has become a lot more fun, but I’m not sure that the increase in fun has help alleviate any of the workplace stress. Now, my work related stress is way down, but my competition related stress is way up.

I take competition a lot more personally than I’d prefer to, and it’s not logical that I would because I’m playing against guys like the uber-mormon who’s played foosball at the institute building for the past 6 years (I haven’t even been to institute six times), and the guy who lived in Germany for two years, he says foosball is huge in Germany (I’ve never spent a night on foreign soil). So why do I take it so personally when I get worked at a game I never play by guys who play it for a living?

This competitive frustration isn’t a new thing either—last year I lived with a bunch of friends who were way into Xbox. Xbox is great because not only can you have four guys playing on one box, but you can link one box to another and get exponentially more guys in one game than ever before. It’s a great way for all the guys in an apartment to enjoy chilling together with a bit of healthy competition, without having to reserve a basketball court or wrangling together enough guys to field two football teams.

The best game for multiplayer gaming I HALO. I’ve probably logged around 20 hours cumulatively of playing the game, yet I still get uncontrollably frustrated when I lose to guys who have invested cumulative years into the game.

A common conversation in our apartment after a few rounds of me getting the HALO kicked out of me was me saying, “Freak Dudes, I’m done!” “Oh, come on, dude. One more game.” “Dude, I can’t. It hurts my heart.”

“‘Every time you lose, you die a little bit—you die inside, a portion of you. Not all of your organs, maybe just your liver.’ Pain is inevitable.”

I honestly do take it personally. I don’t know why I expect to dominate at everything, especially when it comes to things I never even practice. But when Walt schools me at Foosball 10-2, I get so frustrated that I want to go on a testosteronic rampage. Walt’s such a nice guy that when he sees my frustration he offers some gentile words to soften the blow of defeat. But hearing words like, “Man, that was a complete fluke—I wasn’t even trying to make that shot” just fuel the fire because what kind of loser loses to a guy who’s not even trying!

“Great, Kid. Don’t get cocky.”

I’m really pretty envious of friends like D$, who can play a competitive game and even when he loses, he can notice what it was you did to beat him and he’ll enjoy how great you did. “Man, did you see that spin move your guy put on me? That was amazing!”

"Arf..Arf..."

"You pooped in the refrigerator?...You actually Pooped in the refrigerator, if I go and open up the door there'll be poop in my refrigerator?"

"Arf!"

"How'd you do that? In fact I'm not even mad. that's amazing."

One of the few memories I have of enjoying defeat in such a way was, ironically, with D$ two summers ago. He was in Portland for the summer and I was in Seattle. He came up for a short visit and we went to the GameWorks video game arcade down town. It was a great trip because some dad was leaving with his boys just as we got there, and as we were waiting in line to buy our play-time tickets, he handed us his own and said that they each had about an hour’s time left on them—so we played all the games we wanted for free.

But really, the only game we were interested in was the Star Wars pod racing game. We must have raced a half dozen times. We had a movie to catch that afternoon, so we decided to play one last game. I was in the lead the entire time, and feeling pretty good about myself. As we approached the last stretch of the race, Dustin was right on my tail. I had a safe enough lead that all I needed to do was maintain it for the last few meters.

That last stretch included a long but gradual dog-leg to the left. I’ve always heard that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so I decided to take that turn as tightly as possible, and to maintain that tightness I had to be in a constant turn, which cut down on my throttle about 5 percent. Meanwhile, D$ decided to go in a straight line, full throttle and correct his direction once, making more of an angled approach to the finish line.

“Now THIS is podracing!”

Being in the lead, all I could see ahead of me was the finish line. I was confident I had the win in the bag. But when I was about half a meter from the finish line, my frame froze and a big “2” flashed on my screen. I looked over and saw “winner” flash on D$’s screen. I couldn’t believe it! He’d totally stolen the win from me, which in most instances would have caused me to blow my temper, but how he did it was so unexpected, that I was more entertained by his win than I was disappointed by my loss.

I’m positive that it’s a measure of immaturity that causes me to be so bothered by getting beat—but I think its mostly getting blown away that makes me mad. I don’t mind losing a pod race by half a meter, but I can’t stand losing a HALO game 25 kills to 7.

But I guess this experience has given me some insight to why my best friend Ray didn’t like playing basketball with me when we were kids (I was 6’0 and he was 5’5), or why my sisters never wanted to play me at Tecmo Bowl on the Nintendo (nothing too witty to say here, they just plain sucked at Nintendo).

“It's suicide. You've seen him, you know how strong he is. You can't win.”

Why do I continue to play these games even though I continue to get rocked? Well, the competitive side of me thinks that each time I lose I get a little bit better (although my track record would say otherwise). But the social side of me (void of any competitiveness) will say that its for the sheer comradery of the game. I enjoy doing things with my friends, even if it is watch them work me and flatten my pride for a day.

“Hey, you kids are probably saying to yourselves: I'm gonna go out there and grab the world by the tail and wrap it around and pull it down and put it in my pocket! Well, I'm here to tell you that you're probably going to find out, as you go out there, that you're not going to amount to jack squat!”

Perhaps the best way to enjoy myself is to simply expect (or almost even hope) to get blown out of the water, that way if I do I’ll be emotionally prepared for it and I’ll be able to better enjoy my friend’s victory, and if I don’t: hey—I just kicked someone’s butt, what would I have to complain about?