New Games, Same Result

OK. I just reread Kelsee's last post and I couldn't just let it pass. To quote my better half, with regards to the Wii: "I did well, especially with the bowling and tennis. I'm not athletic at all so this was a big surprise for me (that I did so well!)." I scoff at her surprise! What she neglected to mention is her prowess with pretty much any game she plays. While the games in question might have simulated sports, they were still games. And she kicks butt at games. I chalk it up to 60% intelligence and 40% competitiveness. Yes, that's right. My dear, meek, gentle wife is a competitive fiend. (Check out the asterisk at the bottom of this post.) Anyway, back to her gaming prowess...

• Word games. Like Boggle and Scrabble. Kelsee is our resident wordsmith. We play boggle and I'll come away with 15 or 20 words or so. She'll have like 30 or 40. Only Kally has been able to provide competition in Boggle. Kolby could, if he wouldn't spend so much time looking for the obscure eight letter words. In Scrabble, she comes up with the 68 point words when everyone else is getting 10 or 12.
• Strategy games. We are avid board gamers, and we play alot of the civilization/city building strategy games (Like Settlers of Cataan, Carcasonne, Attica, etc.) There are the occasional nights when I'll pull off a few wins, but most of the time we measure my wins in number per week and her's in number per night.
• Card games*. Like Uno, Rummy and Phase 10. We'll play to 500 in Rummy and she'll beat me by more than 100. In Phase 10 she'll usually be up two phases by the time we're four phases in.
• Computer games. She has a knack of figuring out a computer game quickly, then play it exclusively until she's mastered it or is bored with and then moves on to the next game. Only, it takes her much less time to master it than most people. Tetris, Bejeweled, Mah Jong, Jezzball, whatever. I'll play Jezzball and the game will be over in like four minutes. Her's will take 15 minutes and she'll be many hundreds of thousands of points higher than me.
• Shower games. No, not like you think. Get your mind out of the gutter. I mean bridal shower, baby shower, etc. She came back from the most recent baby shower and I was actually shocked--I mean, SHOCKED--that she didn't win either of the games they played. I thought she was slipping, then she announced that she'd spent more time holding one of the babies that was there than she did playing the game.
• Now, the Wii. She got the second highest bowling score of the night, just behind gaming junky Kirby and just ahead of athlete Kody. She ended up winning more tennis matches than she lost (even hitting her dad with her "racket" when he moved too close while she was swinging, or so she says).

Now, you might think there could be another answer to this (ie. maybe Jason just sucks at games). But she does this to everyone, not just me. We play party games sometimes at family parties. She more often than not wins or is on the winning team. Like Scattergories or Taboo. Even Trivial Pursuit. Cameron even comments on this if someone else wins when we are playing games.

Now to explain the * next to card games. There is the rare instance that we find a game that I win. Rare being the operative word here. Shortly after we were married, we went through a Rook phase. For some reason, I won more often than Kelsee. She would get frustrated, but when I suggested we stop or play something else, she'd just lean back in her chair and say "Deal again." One particular night, her competitive self was a major glutton for punishment. I went on quite a run, and she became more and more frustrated. Finally, after another loss, she looked at the stack of cards on the table, then looked at me, and then with both hands shoved all the cards towards me in anger. The cards littered around me on the floor, I vowed to her that we would never play that game again. She asked from time to time over the next few days, but finally gave up. We haven't played that game for 13 years.

And she's never gotten that mad at losing a game again. Of course, since she rarely loses...