My college has everyone paired with a roommate, and my roommate is Vincent. He is cocky and overconfident, and very competitive. From what I've seen, he also doesn't really have that much to be cocky about. i generally do better than him on any test, though he will let it be known whenever he does better than me. I never hear the end of it. In short, he's pretty annoying, and I do not enjoy our time together when it's just the two of us in our shared room.
i had a spare period during the day when I had the room to myself. It was my favourite time of the day. Today, I was playing a baseball video game that I had had for a while. I had gotten pretty good at the game, so even on the hardest difficulty, it had long lost its sense of challenge where I could possibly lose, but it was fun nonetheless. I was in the 8th inning, and the score was 14-1. I silently cursed that I had allowed that solo home run last inning, but played on.
The door swung open suddenly: Vincent was back. His class had been cancelled for the day, and so I guess my alone time would be unceremoniously cut short today.
"What are you up to? What game is that?" Vincent asked, with an annoying smirk. You could tell he was already proving for some way to be a pain in the ass.
"Just a baseball game," I tell him, hoping to sound immersed in the game so he might get the hint.
"Cool. let me play next. It can't be too tough if even you can win by so much."
i grit my teeth just a bit. it's true I could win these games easily now, but there had been a pretty steep learning curve each time I increased the difficulty by a notch. "Yeah, i don't know about that," I say, rolling me eyes.
I finish the game, and the video shows my pitcher pump his first and celebrate with the catcher. Final score: 22-1.
"Great, my turn," Vincent declares, and starts casually trying to pull the controller away from me.
"No sorry, it's my game," I say bluntly.
"Come on, give me a turn. Roommates are supposed to share their shit."
"Why should I? You didn't even let me borrow your umbrella when it was pouring rain yesterday." I think this is a good counterpoint, but it just seems to remind Vincent of that time, which means him grin.
"Oh yeah, you got so fucking wet!" Vincent laughs to himself.
I glare back. "So why would I share with you?"
"Come on, not the same thing at all! Geez, you're so scared I would show you how much better I am than you."
"Excuse me?" Holy, typical Vincent goading. Part of me wants to leave it alone, but the other part feels challenged. "No way, I would wipe the floor with you."
"How about this, then. we play a 2-player game. if I win, i get to play for the rest of the afternoon."
I look at him, trying to understand once more where this bravado comes from. "Fine," I agree, "and if you lose, you never ask me to play again."
"Okay, but you have to give me some odds. How about....". Suddenly his eyes light up. "If I win, I get to play while sitting my butt down on your face?"
"What? No! That's gross." I reflexively say.
"Hey, if you're so confident, then it'll never happen anyway, right? Unless deep down you know I'm gonna be better than you."
Deep down, I know that Vincent is an asshole. It would be nice to be able to wipe that smirk off his face. And it's true that that scenario was incredibly remote. "Fine," I say, "let's play."
i toss over the second controller, and we each choose a team. I give a very quick tutorial of what each button does, and then we're off.
"Not as easy as it looks, eh?," I say, as i change the speeds and locations of my pitches to easily strike out his first set of batters. In the bottom half of the first inning, Vincent serves up some easy predictable pitches that i immediately make him pay for. it's already 7-0 by the end of the inning.