You're as great as you are, unless you arent.

Competitions and Comparisons.

My father brought up to me today that he would like to compete with me in the annual Thanksgiving-morning 5k out at the lake. He's been training for months and wants to prove to me (and by me, I mean himself) that he can still beat me.

I think I'll pretend to sprain my ankle a mile in. Partly because I don't think my getaway sticks can run more than a mile, and my dad's sure as shit can't, and that way, we're all winners.

Or something like that.

Why do parents do that? ..Compare.

It's quite unhealthy to compare your children to siblings, cousins, neighbors, friends, or scarily precocious child actors. For example, "Congratulations at coming in second in high jump on your class Field Day! Did you know that Anna Paquin just won an Oscar for her role in The Piano and she's your age?"

This does nothing to help my, eh-hem, your child's personal growth. Rather than stirring up a competitive spirit, it will likely make them anxious, and later, resentful that you didn't appreciate them for who they were, and much later, morbidly pleased when the formerly precocious child star turns into a drug-addled failure. This has not yet happened, and probably will never happen, to Anna Paquin, as her career seems to be going quite well. Not that I care.

You know how you could always tell that your parent was comparing you to your much more successful cousin Kenneth? No? Just me? Okay. Well, Kenneth is captain of the soccer team, played first cello in the orchestra, served as president of the student council, and got into Princeton as an early-decision admission. While, I on the other hand, was cut from JV soccer my senior year, and referred to the school orchestra as "dorkestra", which although funny and true, did not help my resume.

Maybe you had those parents that took it a little overboard, drawing up elaborate charts directly comparing your life to the "Kenneth" in your family tree. And perhaps you experienced that awkward moment when you stumbled upon them and they hastily explained how the charts were part of something top secret, and to keep it remaining top secret, you must never speak of it to a soul again! (Sorry, I'm getting dramatic and imaginitive) Fortunately, being not very precocious, you were satisfied with this answer. Had you been Kenneth or Anna Paquin, they'd have a little more explaining to do.

Now look at you! You're out of college, and a nice, normal, well-adjusted person. Unlike Kenneth, who is now addicted to porn and his old-school Sega gaming system. I bet your charts didn't see that coming!

As parents now see their children in their mid-twenties as adults, instead of dropping the comparisons all together, they switch from comparing their child from Kenneth, to comparing them with themselves. This is where suggested annual Thanksgiving-day 5k's make birth, and it is a vicious cycle.

For one, it proves nothing. In 90 percent of the sports a parent tries to engage in with a child in their mid-twenties, and they are God knows how old (but surely really old)....they will lose. Not even by a little, outright crushed. Remember when you were a small child and you picked on an even smaller child by placing your palm on their head and telling them to try to hit you and they would swing with all their might and never touch you and they'd be all like "Gee whiz, what's the big idea?" It's like that.

If you consider chess or backgammon to a sport, these would fall into the 10 percent that a parent may, and is socially allowed to, excel in.

Just never resort to an even more insidious comparison. Namely, your weight. When someone who is much older says "I'm the same weight that I was in high school", there is no one that is impressed by this or happy for them. In fact, this is one of the most annoying sentences ever uttered, along with "You look tired" or, "You remind me of a late-career Beverly D'Angelo".However, the proper response to latter two remarks is "What the f*** is that supposed to mean?...the proper response to the weight comment is "Shut the f*** up".

The kinds of people that make remarks about how tired you seem or how much you look like Beverly D'Angelo, although an asshole, holds all the power. Because subconsciously, you now feel bad about yourself. However, when someone states that they are the same weight that they were in high school, that person is merely an anorexic beggart and a pathological liar. They have nothing to gain by uttering such an insipid phrase. What did you say!? You're not the same weight you were in high school!? Oh, fatty.