The competitive urge

Daughter’s first sports day this week. It finished at the exact moment the England World Cup match kicked off (3pm Wednesday). The field of play was almost bereft of fathers, and those that were there could be seen afterwards saying, “Come on, come on! We need to get going!” I’ve never understood the sporting impulse. I’ve only ever been competitive in arenas where I know I have a chance of winning (occasional conversational witticism and Trivial Pursuit. That’s about it.)

I remember asking a friend at school how he’d got a bruise on his arm. “Cricket.” I looked blank. “Ball coming towards my head, so I put my arm up.” I kept looking blank: “Why didn’t you duck?” It was clear from an early age that sport and I would be forever strangers. He tried to explain that he’d taken a hit for the good of the team, but I was still bewildered.

So, now I have a son, 20 months, who loves charging about (and vehicles), and a five-year-old daughter who will happily throw a ball around or chase her friends round the playground. And I wonder: what will I do if they actually like sport? Son will get very frustrated if he wants to play at the weekend, and has to endure a kick-about with the old man. I’ll be the very opposite of the Competitive Dad who never lets the kid score or be satisfied with his performance; I’ll have absolutely no interest in the game, and he will always win, leading him very quickly to a state of extreme boredom.

This is one reason why I make little effort to talk to the few other fathers I see at playgroups. I have absolutely no interest in cars or football. I can talk about books and wine (but I’d far rather be actually indulging in those pleasures and not talking at all). The “other mothers” (as I slightly inaccurately call them) and I talked today about how pointless Daughter’s sports day was. Lots of activities, but no competitiveness – no races, no medals. Very dull.

It would be nice to live without some of its manifestations, but that competitive urge is in the DNA. Some of us will never excel on the sports field, but we probably will in the science class, the exercise book, the music room… Traditionally, those children who can run like hell are less successful academically. What a school should do, surely, is celebrate each kind of achievement?

That urge – to make war, to fight, to win at the expense of someone else (in business or physical exertion) is the same one which makes us have children, strive for a better life for them, look for the best school. That impulse drives some to kill, and made Shakespeare keep honing away until he had turned the phrase “bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang”. Lose it, and we die out. Here’s an idea: let education be realistic.