(The following is a guest post written by Dalton Anderson who is covering for his mother, Amy Rees Anderson, who just returned from a five day philanthropy trip and was in need of sleep)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Winning has consequences. Be ready to accept them.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was third grade. I was a cute, well-groomed third-grader, with great hair and fantastic eyebrows. Honestly, I looked like a messy troll doll, but I was a fabulous messy troll doll. In fact, I had a pretty cute third-grade girlfriend at the time, who for the sake of my story, and for the sake of her anonymity, I will refer to as \u201cmy lady.\u201d This is not to be confused with my actual <\/em>lady, who I am happily married to. The term girlfriend is just a little weird because we were third graders\u2014and how serious of relationship can you actually have in the third grade? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Something that you have to understand about me is that I\u2019m\nan incredibly competitive person. I came out of the womb competitive. It all\nstarted when I won the race of life by being the first to the egg, so it\u2019s in\nmy nature to be a winner. As a third grader, I valued winning above all else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One day in class, our teacher announced that we would play \u201cheads-up,\nseven-up.\u201d This is a game where the class puts their heads down on their desk,\ncloses their eyes, and sticks their thumbs up. Then, a few choosers go around\nsilently and touch someone\u2019s thumb, effectively \u201ctagging\u201d them. The choosers then\ngo to the front of the class, and everyone raises their heads. Those who were\ntagged have to guess which of the choosers picked them. If the tagged\nindividual guesses correctly, they switch places and become a chooser.\nHopefully I\u2019ve explained that well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we were playing, I was tagged, and then correctly guessed\nwho tagged me. It was then my turn to be a tagger (or chooser to remain\nconsistent.) I had a difficult decision to make. Even though I was only a\nthird-grader, I knew that there was an expectation from my lady to choose her,\nbut my winner mentality knew that if I played to those expectations, I\u2019d lose.\nPart of me wishes I could say that I actually had to hesitate on my decision,\nbut I quickly motioned to another chooser to tag my lady. Game recognize game,\nbecause he immediately obliged. I then picked the girl that had a crush on the\nother kid, and we both stealthed our way to the front of the class. When\neveryone\u2019s heads came up, the guessing began. My eyes didn\u2019t leave my lady\u2019s,\nand I gave a sly, flirty smile, just to seal my victory. When it was her turn\nto guess, she did as expected, and said my name. I had hoped to play it off,\nbut I can only assume a big stupid smirk came across my face as I said, \u201cIt\nwasn\u2019t me.\u201d She was so confident that I had picked her, that she was already\ngetting ready to take my spot, and it gave me a sense of wicked satisfaction to\npop her bubble. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She wasn\u2019t amused. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was pretty proud of myself, and it was even more\nsatisfying when the girl that I had tagged said the name of the kid that tagged\nmy lady. It was a brilliant plan, and in the words of Colonel John \u201cHannibal\u201d\nSmith, \u201cI love it when a plan comes together.\u201d I went another three rounds as\nchooser, evading guessers the whole time, and then the school bell rang telling\nus it was time to go home, meaning I would be leaving as a reigning champ. We\nall packed up quickly, but when I turned to look for my lady, she had already\nrushed out to the carpool and was gone before I could talk to her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next day, it was clear that my relationship status had\nchanged. The normal smile and warm gaze I\u2019d receive from across the room during\nLanguage Arts was now an empty, cold, bitter\u2014well not stare, because she\nactually just cold-shouldered me the whole morning. I may have been a brilliant\ntactician in a classroom game, and I may have been smart enough to know that\nshe wouldn\u2019t be happy about my strategy, but I was a poor na\u00efve fool to believe\nthat she\u2019d forget about it. When lunchtime came, I looked for my lady in the\ncafeteria to sit next to her. It was a bad sign when I found her sitting\nbetween her two best friends, leaving a lone spot on the opposite side of the\ntable from them. I walked over and sat down as if I was interviewing for an\nexecutive position with only an unpaid internship on my resume. I was mostly\nignored, not just by my lady, but by her two friends as well. I tried to make\nsmall talk, but was abruptly cut off when my lady asked me why I didn\u2019t pick\nher in the game the day before. The gears slowly turned as I realized she was\nstill deeply upset over it. I clearly wasn\u2019t a child genius, because I\nanswered, \u201cI wanted to win.\u201d That\u2019s all it took. I had signed my own death\nwarrant. The fact that I would put winning over our relationship was all she\nneeded to hear. She said something about how we weren\u2019t boyfriend\/girlfriend\nanymore, and that I should find a new place to sit for lunch. Then, I was\ndismissed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t remember being heartbroken\u2014it was the third grade\nafter all. In the week-and-a-half of our relationship, we had sat next to each\nother during lunch about four times, and walked around the playground picking\ndandelions. I mean seriously, it was the third grade. But it was definitely a\nwake-up call for third-grade Dalton. It was the first time I realized that\nthere are consequences to choosing the game over relationships. That lesson has\nstuck with me my entire life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PS. My third grade lady and I never did smooth things over, and we went from elementary through high school not interacting again. Ironically, she ended up marrying a guy named Dalton, and I like to think that she never could get over me (or all Dalton\u2019s are just ridiculously good looking and we can\u2019t turn off the charm. …That\u2019s probably what it is.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n