Listener Betrayal 226!

[Mike]

We're doing it!

I've got Noah on as my guest Aidan. Ask us whatever!

Noah wants to know if you have any odd ways to deal with anger/frustration in a game. He's talking about video games, but it can be any game if that makes your answer more interesting.

Thanks!

[Mike]

DONE!

[Phoebe]

Too late for listener betrayal, but...
I have played a lot of games with people who get angry and frustrated, and I think the reason I never do is that I grew up playing games with my grandma, who would always laugh at the outcome regardless of whether it was good or bad for her personally. The fun of the game was found in the playing of it and she didn't really care what the outcome was. However, she was also very smart, and she told me that if she was patient and kept in a good humor she would often learn something about the game or the people she was playing with that helped her win the next time. And indeed she won much more often than not. So I absorbed the message that biding your time with patience and humor leads you to win in the end. For instance, I had to lose a couple games of Risk and Monopoly to my husband or some combination of other people before everyone in the house except my husband realized that I was the only trustworthy partner with whom you could make a deal. So now I'm able to make deals to my advantage right and left and I'm much more likely to win those games.

Games that have caused me actual feelings of frustration in the past include Scrabble, Canasta, and Hearts. In those situations you need to either learn something from the people you play with (Scrabble), learn something about the people and accept the uncontrollable flow of luck (Canasta), or much like Chevy Chase in Caddyshack, learn to be the Queen of Spades rather than fearing her (Hearts).

[Tahlvin]

[Phoebe]

Worst small-kid fear thing: attacked by another child and chased by that kid's angry dog. Shortly after that was overly proximate to a tornado whilst in a car, and that was very bad too. Another time, stitches on face while awake, which is not desired, and once a mean old lady stopped her car in the street to say she was going to call the police on my friend and I if we didn't stop bullying this other kid, and what she didn't know was that the other kid was the actively violent bully we wished to avoid and from whom we were trying to defend ourselves. After that we were both afraid either that the police were coming for us or that the other kid would somehow use this to hurt us.