Still 7-3

August 19, 2026

I was thinking this morning about kids sports and how at younger ages they don’t even keep score anymore. No winners, no losers, everyone wins, no scoreboard, which somehow turned into me thinking about how much we prioritize our own feelings now, even inside group activities. Somewhere in that conversation came the sentence, your feelings are real, you are allowed to have them, and the scoreboard still says 7–3.

I laughed.

I don’t even know why I find that so funny but I do. Maybe because it feels like something I would actually like to say to people on a fairly regular basis because keeping score is important.

Because obviously somebody won. The ball went into one net more times than the other one. We can choose not to write it down but I’m pretty sure at least one kid noticed.

I would have noticed. Actually I absolutely would have been keeping score in my head.

I know this because when my own kids were younger they would come home with the same participation jargon. We all won. No you didn’t. Maybe I didn’t always say that out loud but my inner voice was absolutely standing beside an imaginary scoreboard going, it was 7–3. Somebody won. Somebody lost.

And I suppose this is where I should admit that I have never won a sportsmanship award in my life.

Not one.

Younger Arbe was wildly competitive and led with intense emotions around most things in life. Fun was winning. That was basically the definition. Winning was fun. Losing was unbearable. I wasn’t the kid who lost and thought, well that was a lovely opportunity to participate.

I was pissed.

Sometimes very pissed.

But once I got over the rage there was information sitting there.

Work harder.

Practice more.

Focus.

Study.

Whatever it was, losing meant I hadn’t done enough to win this time. Maybe the other person was simply better than me. Fine. Then what would it take for me to become better?

That was competition.

It wasn’t always fair either. Sometimes I could do everything right and still lose. Sometimes someone had an advantage I didn’t have. Sometimes I wasn’t the most talented person there. Life wasn’t going to rearrange any of that because I had worked hard or wanted something badly.

I think that’s probably a fairly important thing to learn.

Life isn’t particularly interested in fairness. Adult life can actually be pretty cut throat. Someone else gets the position. Someone else has more talent. Someone else gets chosen. Sometimes you deserve something and don’t get it. Sometimes you don’t deserve it and somehow you do.

There is still an outcome.

And competition taught me that I had some accountability in mine.

Not all of it. That’s important too. But enough that after the initial fuck this wore off, I could ask myself what I needed to do differently.

Losing gave me somewhere to go.

And then there was the other lesson.

What to do with all those feelings.

Time and place.

I can feel something intensely without immediately acting on it. I can be furious and decide this isn’t the time. I can be disappointed and still function. I can lose and survive the feeling of losing. I can know somebody is deliberately trying to push an emotional button and decide they don’t get the reaction they’re looking for.

Which has probably made some people very mad over the years.

They may have been expecting younger Arbe.

She’s still here.

She’s just supervised now.

Although perhaps not as closely as she should be because I golfed my first 18 holes last night and the scorecard may have been altered to represent me as the winner.

To be clear, our game was not offering participation awards. There was going to be a winner.

I just apparently had some thoughts about who that should be.

My kids know I’m a poor loser. My husband knows I’m a poor loser. This isn’t hidden family information. They have all had years of exposure and apparently have decided the best approach is accommodation rather than rehabilitation.

I created my own rules throughout the entire game with my son and husband. I don’t even know if I could explain all of them now. They seemed perfectly reasonable at the time.

They willingly went along with them.

Then somehow the final scorecard showed me as the winner.

Nobody questioned it.

Apparently we’re fine with competition. It’s the accuracy of the scoreboard we’re flexible on.

So perhaps I have absolutely no business commenting on children and sportsmanship.

But I don’t think the answer was ever to get rid of feisty Arbe. I like her. She wants to win. She is competitive as fuck. She still believes fun and winning have a suspiciously close relationship.

She just learned there are things you do with those feelings and things you don’t.

My husband and son apparently decided changing the scorecard falls comfortably within the acceptable category.

Honestly, that’s love.

Anyway, I was thinking about feelings before I started confessing to golf fraud.

There seems to be so much emphasis now on how something makes us feel. I don’t mean feelings aren’t important because obviously they are. I have plenty of them. Sometimes I’d actually like fewer.

But when did having a feeling start carrying so much authority?

I can feel something and still be wrong.

I can feel excluded and perhaps there was a perfectly reasonable reason I wasn’t included. I can feel like something is unfair and maybe it isn’t. I can be offended and maybe nobody did anything offensive. I can dislike someone’s decision and still understand exactly why they made it.

None of that makes the feeling fake.

It just means my feeling isn’t the only piece of information available.

Which somehow takes me back to the soccer score.

It’s 7–3.

The kid who lost can cry. I’d let my kid cry. Losing sucks. Maybe you played terribly. Maybe you played really well and the other team was better. Maybe their goalie is some freakishly talented seven-year-old who ruined your Saturday.

Still 7–3.

And now I’m wondering what happens when we take both pieces away.

We remove the outcome. Nobody won. Nobody lost.

Then we make the feeling the most important part.

Everyone won.

That would have been beyond disastrous for me.

I’m trying to imagine younger Arbe being taught that there was no outcome and that whatever she was feeling about the situation was the most important thing happening.

Imagine that version of me.(shudder)

Competition gave all that intensity somewhere useful to go. You lost? Feel terrible. Get mad. Then figure out how to get better.

And the fact that I couldn’t act on every emotion taught me something else.

You can feel all of it without making everyone else experience it with you.

There are outcomes.

And your feelings about the outcome don’t change it.

Your feelings are real. You are allowed to have them.

And the scoreboard still says 7–3.

I can safely say that if childhood Arbe had instead been taught that nobody loses and her feelings were the most important part of the experience, that golf course would not have survived my first 18 holes last night.

There would be nothing left.

Just a smouldering scorecard showing Arbe won.