I admit that I can be a tad on the competitive side. Once, when Jason and I were first dating, we got onto long parallel escalators in a PATH station. When I saw Jason start to trot a few steps forward on his escalator, I thought we were racing and jumped forward like a runner off the block. When I got to the bottom, flushed and slightly sweaty, and looked back up at Jason, he was scowling. “I was just trying to catch up to you enough that we could hold hands across the banister,” he said. “Also, I think you might have a problem.” I, of course, denied that enjoying a friendly escalator contest should be magnified to a DSM-IV kind of issue. And yet, a dinner last week made me reconsider the charge.

We were eating at a restaurant about which I had heard quite a lot in advance. It’s the sort of small-joint-makes-a-reputation-for-itself that I usually love, so the fact that I was disappointed in my meal was all the more crushing. But worse still was the fact that Jason’s choice of entrée was truly fantastic. I had to listen to him making happy sounds of enjoyment the entire meal while I pushed my gloppy sauce around on my plate. The reason we were there in the first place was that I was taking him out for his birthday, so I tried to reason that it was only fair that he liked his meal more. But the truth was glaring: he had won. I can’t help it; I love it when we’re eating out and we taste each other’s meals and Jason says something like, “Mmm, mine is good, but yours is great.” It makes me feel like I have accomplished something, however small. It makes me feel like I have managed to raise the act of ordering off a menu to an art worthy of competition. Maybe I do have a problem. Continue reading →