Sir Eldridge Dashingstache crouched patiently behind the curtains of his enemie’s fifth story bedroom window. Watching. Waiting. He had been washed ashore on this island three days ago in a catastrophic mermaid woo-ing accident. Since then, he had spent every hour fleeing a madman who had taken to hunting stranded sailors for sport.
Now the tables had turned. He heard the door open, the sweet music of metal sliding against metal as his pursuer removed the magazine from his pistol. This was it. He pounced from behind the curtains, burying his knife into the fiend’s shoulder as he pinned him to the wall.
“CHEATER!” screamed General Kavshevnikov. “You would. You would, bro. Gosh, you’re so bad at this.”
Dashingstache was confused.
“I knew I should’ve nerfed that knife when I had the chance,” Kavshevnikov said to himself. “Way overpowered. A wooden knife would’ve been more balanced.”
“Wait, what?” Dashingstache asked, his face quickly turning redder than the blood seeping through his whining opponents shirt. “You gave me a knife and a bit of food, tossed me out into your own personal jungle, chased me with dogs, guns and angry Russians for three straight days and you’re…complaining that you lost?”
“Yeah, sure, I ‘lost’,” huffed Kavshevnikov, rolling his eyes. “If you can even lose to a noob who sneaks into the house when it was clearly against the rules. I guess some people just don’t respect the game. Casual.”
“You’re not even a little impressed?” Dashing- stache roared. “Amused even? I climbed five stories with nothing but my bare hands just to get up here!”
“Cool story bro,” snorted Kavshevnikov. “Go cry about it.”
Frothing at the mouth and without anything else to say, Dashingstache tossed his man-child adversary out the window, hoping to end it all then and there. Kavshevnikov’s evil would live on though. In those last moments he said something that would haunt Dashingstache for the rest of his natural life.
“Lol, he totally just rage-quit.”
This is exactly why “The Most Dangerous Game” couldn’t be written by somebody from my genera- tion. For those who’ve never read it, it’s a classic short
story about the manliest sailor ever washing up on a private island owned by a crazy Russian guy who then hunts him for sport. It was awesome enough for “Johnny Bravo” to devote an entire episode to parody it, so it’s safe to say that it’s one of the greatest se- quences of letters to ever grace paper. However, the characters make no sense in this day and age.
Nowadays, people don’t appreciate a worthy ad- versary. Rather than being able to admit that they faced a skilled opponent who took a well deserved victory, people pull out their excuses and insults faster than Clint Eastwood can pull a revolver. I was tired. The ref was making bad calls. He’s only good because he has no life and practices all day. Who cares if he won, he’s still a noob.
It’s ridiculous, and what’s even more ridiculous is that it doesn’t even matter what the competition is. I umpired tee-ball this summer, and let me tell you, tee-ball is some serious business. Almost every coach completely tossed the whole concept of learning how to play baseball out the window in favor of squeezing the best game of tee-ball they could out of their team of child soldiers.
That being said, not every 5-year-old is destined to be an athlete. That was exactly the case for pretty much every player on this one particular team, and their coach was not happy about it.
Every other play this guy was in my face. After a while, I couldn’t help but make bad calls because of how much brain power I was having to devote toward figuring out how many of his friends I could take in a fight if he finally snapped and took a swing at me (answer: all of them. Obviously). To top it all off, his son was sitting on second base drawing in the dirt, left field and third asked me if it was against the rules for them to hold hands and every time the ball left the tee the whole team dog-piled on top of it and had a tiny person bar fight until the coaches ran over and broke it up. Even if I had actually been making bad calls (I wasn’t), it wouldn’t change the fact that that guy’s kid is probably going to regularly wear sweater vests when he grows up. It also wouldn’t have changed the fact that this guy was a terrible person.
In “The Most Dangerous Game,” even though General Zaroff (the villain from the actual story) is a sadistic sociopath, you can’t help but admire his respect for his opponent. The way he was amused with his prey’s ability to put up a fight made him one of the manliest
characters I’ve ever read. He was such a good sport that he went insane trying to find an animal that could give him a challenge. While I don’t condone hunting people for sport (unless they pick fights at tee-ball games) we could all learn something from that.
While the George Patton mentality of a good American never cared for a man that lost and laughed is fantastic for war time, gin rummy with grandma isn’t war. Life wouldn’t be fun if you never ran into some- body that could give you a run for your money.When you find yourself competing against a worthy adversary, cherish it while you can . If you need some inspiration, google “The Most Dangerous Game.” You can find it for free on the internet and I’d recommend it to anyone. In the meantime, don’t be a sore loser. If you can’t appreciate the thrill of competition for what it is, you’re letting a fictional character with a laundry list of mental disorders have more strength of character than you.
