Excerpt from Book of the Week, Tucker and Me: Problem Child

... toward the end of the year, we had games and festivities, one of which involved guessing the amount of candy in a very large jar. Whoever guessed the right amount of individual candies was the winner. I didn’t care about the candy, but I did care about winning, as I was wired to be extraordinarily competitive, something that was often discouraged by my teachers who would classify my displeasure at losing as being a “poor sport.” In essence, they were trying to filter out of me the exact quality that would help me be successful in life—thanks a lot.

            In any event, I watched as other children tried futilely to maintain their count of the giant candy jar. I had other ideas. When there was no activity around the jar, I took a ruler and decided that I would focus my efforts on counting the candies in exactly one inch of the jar. This would not necessarily give me an accurate count, but I believed it would give me a better chance to focus with precision on a small area, and then multiply that area by the total height of the jar, which was cylindrical.

            I submitted my guess, and what do you know, I was right on the money! However, some other smarty-pants student named Lauren was also right on the money, so a tie-breaker had to be employed between her and me. The teacher decided that a student’s mother who was helping out in class would select a number from one to one hundred. Each of us would pick a number, and the one closest to the number she picked would win. I was to go first.

            By going first, I was limited, in that if I picked any number too high or too low, my opposition could simply pick the next number up or down and have the odds in her favor. I believed the mother would select a number that was either her age, or close to it, and I believed her to be in her forties. I chose the number 49, hoping to bait Lauren into picking 50, thus giving me half of the numbers, and in particular all of the forties. I was astonished when she picked 67. How could anybody be so foolish to pick such a number? Why not pick the number 50?

            As it turns out, the number was 43, within the range I had imagined, and I was declared the winner. This experience also taught me something. Lauren was no dummy. In fact, she was quite smart. ... Although Lauren was smart and willing to work hard to prepare, she was not strategic. I learned that day that being smart and well-prepared is not enough. You must also be strategic in your thinking, something that I have carried forward. People have often described me as calculating, and my guess is that sometimes they mean it in a complimentary fashion, and other times not, but for better or worse, this seems to be how I am wired.

Tucker and Me is written by Andrew Harvey (contact: info@msipress.com). Read more about the book, the author, and the stories here. 

For a review copy of Tucker and Me, contact editor@msipress.com.