Protesting the Game

My wife was in the middle of a game of solitaire when she showed me the cards on the table.

There were two fours of spades.

“Someone”—never me, of course—had mixed two decks of cards together. After sorting things out, we discovered there were four extra cards in the deck she had been playing with.

That quickly ended her game of solitaire.

That was no problem.

The problem was that we had just finished our second game of cribbage with that same deck of cards.

It did seem like the hands had been better than usual.

I had won the first game. My wife had won the second.

When we discovered the mix-up, I was the one who immediately announced, “I’m protesting the game!”

Of course, it was the last game I was protesting.

The one I had lost.

I never heard my wife protest the first game. She just laughed.

How could this happen?

It was humorous and an honest mistake. We were even in games won. I didn’t have much to stand on.

But over the last year, my wife has beaten me more often than not. I’m always looking for a little payback.

The whole thing was of no consequence. My protest was in jest.

Or was it?

Was there some small part of me that regretted teaching my wife how to play cribbage now that she was beating me much of the time?

We are both competitive in a friendly way. But she didn’t protest the game she lost.

I protested mine.

That stayed with me longer than the extra cards.

I wonder how often I do something similar in other parts of my life.

How often do I quietly protest when I have not done as well as I thought I should?

When I have disappointed myself? When something in me insists that I should have done better, known better, been better?

Maybe some of my strongest competition is not with anyone else.

Maybe it is with the person I think I ought to be.

Those protests are harder to laugh off.