Competition

I never really think of myself as competitive, but I must be. I've heard it before, and sometimes a competitive thought enters my brain before I can stop it.

Beth and I take piano lessons from a mother and daughter team. She is awarded stickers at each lesson depending on how well she's done with her lesson. It's a typical reward system where you can trade in your stickers for small items like pencils, notepads, bouncy balls or gum. The grand prize is a movie pass for 100 stickers and until Christmas no one had ever saved enough stickers for that.

I wasn't really expecting stickers. I thought it was something devised for kids to keep motivation up. At the end of my first lesson in January I jokingly asked my teacher how many stickers she'd given me. She seriously said "I think, maybe, 12."

Instantly my brain started to calculate when or if I would catch up to Beth at that rate. Why do I care? Do I need bouncy balls? Do I even chew gum? It's silly, but that's what I did.

I also noticed that one of the few adult students was listed on the wall as having 99 stickers. I know her from church and she's a bit of character. I figured she wrote that number on the chart herself. It turned out that she hadn't, but she wasn't taking the stickers seriously either.

Of course, I had to calculate when I would catch up to her too. She only had one sticker to go! That wasn't fair. That was a huge head start.

This week Beth reached 101 stickers and was awarded with a movie pass.

My lessons have been a bit sporatic this month and my lesson was cancelled. While I waited for Beth's lesson to end I played the piano in the other room. Her teacher listened outside the door and then awarded me with a movie pass for my brilliant playing! Yay!


Another movie pass was awarded to our friend from church this week, so the friendly competition is over. We're now planning to go to a movie all together. What good winners we are! Hopefully we'll find some light chick-flick that's child friendly.


And we all begin again starting with zero stickers this week. Who will get the next movie pass first? Or will we cave in and trade in early for a sparkly pencil?