I’m a Loser

Yes, Dear Reader, I will admit it. I’m a loser. Matter of fact, I’ve been a loser my entire life. Now as ridiculous as that statement may sound, just keep reading and you will soon understand why I say I am a lifelong loser.

Twin Brother Mark gave me my first loss.

Even before I was born, I was a loser. Twin Brother Mark was born first and bragged for the rest of his life that he actually kicked me out of the way. My next memory of a big loss was when I was in the third grade, the location and time of a lot of my stories. There were a lot of losses that year, but this one was the biggest. I lost out on being the boyfriend of Candi Samples because I didn’t ask her.

Well, I did ask her, but she never answered because she got sick that day from all the candygrams I sent to her and had to go home. I didn’t find out until the fifth grade that she would’ve said yes.

My losses kept mounting up as I went to Briarwood High School, home of the Mighty Buccaneers. I joined the wrestling team in eighth grade. I liked that the entire team could actually lose, but you as an individual were still a winner if you won your match. And if you lost your individual match, but the team won, you were still a winner. I liked that.

Until…

I liked that all the way up to my junior year, when I found myself in the state finals wrestling someone I had already beaten three times during the regular season. I decided I would perform a risky move called the Guillotine. It’s a very fancy move and not many wrestlers knew it, but I knew it, and so did my brothers. I wanted to be the first one to use it to pin my opponent. When the ref slapped the mat, I jumped up knowing that I had won!

But no…

The ref raised the other person’s hand. You see, when you do the Guillotine, you have to get your shoulders dangerously close to the mat also. Yes, dear reader, I pinned myself in the state finals and got second instead of first. I did win the following year, but I’ve never forgotten that feeling of being a loser.

Next up on the losing train, during the summer, I was off to college my freshman year during the summer. I thought it was a great idea to act like Harry Houdini, hang upside down by my ankles, trying to get out of a straitjacket 30 feet up in the air. Yep, I did that.

Here’s the losing part.

I was gonna do Harry Houdini one better. I was gonna win the escape game and light the rope tied to my ankles on fire! Of course, the objective was to get out of the jacket and climb back up the burning rope without it breaking. I knew I was gonna be a winner ’cause I had put a steel cable through the middle of the rope.

Here’s the losing part.

Unfortunately, my rope wasn’t long enough so they had tied it to a regular rope. That rope burnt through and broke, plummeting me to earth some thirty feet below. Yep, all the way down I was thinking, I did not get out of the straight jacket in time. Boy, am I a big loser. 

Next up: a fire department job that never was. 

I wanted to be a fireman and teach fire safety education, but there was no position for teaching in the fire department. So, I volunteered on my days off…for 28 years. I chased that dream, trying to make a job that wasn’t there, all along volunteering my services teaching kids about fire safety and injury prevention. I lost out on a job because I chased something that was never there.

Looking back at losing.

Now, looking back over my life, I realize I learned so much more from losing than I ever did from winning. If I’d been born first, I would not have been called the baby of the family. That statement drove me to work out, get stronger, and study hard so no one would call me a baby ever again. And eventually it worked.

Missing out on having a girlfriend in third grade made me become self-aware of what I thought I needed to change to become better. After Candi told me in the fifth grade her not answering me had nothing to do with me, and she would’ve been my girlfriend after all – I realized something profound: I really didn’t have to try and change to be someone else, people liked me for just who I am.

Pinning myself in the state finals in 11th grade taught me an extremely valuable life lesson – humility. Never again have I shown off just because I can. I also learned something else that day: don’t ever think you’re the best at something, because there’s always someone right around the corner who’s gonna prove you wrong.

Not getting out of the straitjacket in time and winding up in the hospital made me finally realize that perhaps I needed to concentrate on my studies at college instead of trying to be a professional magician.

And what about spending 28 years chasing a job that was never there. Was that all a waste of time? All those years teaching fire safety gave me a love for teaching children. Something I still have to his very day.

And now we finally come to the reason for this story.

My granddaughters were in the championship soccer game last week and they lost. We won’t go into the reasons why they lost, but when it came time for me to talk to them, this is what happened.

I wasn’t critical of how they played. I wasn’t critical of their pregame warm-ups. Matter of fact, I wasn’t critical of anything. I just looked at them and told them what my dad told me when I lost in the state finals back in 11th grade. “Think about what you did. Think about how you contributed to the loss. Next time, don’t do that. Just do better. You’ll learn a lot more from losing than you ever will from winning.”

The number one thing I’ve learned about losing is that losing does not feel nearly as good as winning, but it’s sometimes better for us in the long run. And that revelation, my friend, is coming from a lifelong loser.

And I’m proud of it.