The Hits' Adam Green: My competitive streak got a bruising

The Hits DJs, Megan Banks and Adam Green.

COMMENT

We were never the most competitive family growing up, my father preferring camping trips to basketball camps, watching rugby with us on the couch rather than from the sidelines, and a fishing rod to a hockey stick.

With two brothers, there was sometimes moments of fleeting competition, Nintendo controller in hand and Mario over the finish line for the win. It was never me, my younger brother's prowess at Nintendo among other sporting endeavours clearly on display.

And so now I have become a father, it has been an opportunity to become more competitive, to help drive those sporting aspirations and redeem the losses of yesteryear by completely and utterly destroying my daughters on the sports fields and board games of today.

Until now, because I have been served and left wanting. First, it was chess. How hard could it be to beat an 11-year-old who has been taught by her friend?

It turns out the answer is very hard. Despite knowing the basic rules of chess myself, miss 11 has taken to it like a duck to water and is always thinking three moves ahead of me. So I flipped the board and gave up.

On to memory with a nearly 6-year-old. Surely my extra 34 odd years would hold me in good stead.

Flipping card after card I struggled to recall where the guitar was, "Kayak, and CHILLY BIN? Did YOU move the cards?" I'd ask the child. "No, dad." Came the reply, as she whipped up her seventh pair to my one.

"Well, I did" I replied as I swept my hand across the table and stormed off to the bathroom.

The weekend came around and we were lucky enough to strap into our skis for the fourth time. (Not telling the kids that I had spent a lot of my youth on Mt Ruapehu and was, in fact, reasonably adept at going down a mountain.)

This is my moment. My time to shine. "Shall we race?" I ask my 9-year-old, last one downs a rotten egg!

The wind rushed around my face as I stared down at the finish line, already basking in the glory of my win, turning to avoid the snowboarder in front of me, a peach jacketed flash whipped by my side, "See ya at the bottom Dad".

The last in a line of losses at the hands of my offspring, I accepted my fate, winner of most time spent in the bathroom on a daily basis. Take that, losers!

- Adam Green

* Don't miss Adam Green and Megan Banks on The Hits Hawke's Bay from 6am to 9am, Monday to Friday