Of Competition Brendan Constantine (bio) or “And the sheeted dead did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets” The act of throwing a body from a window is calledDefenestration. Saying you know thisis called Showing Off. Whether people are born competitiveis still unknown. However, exhaustive researchhas made one thing abundantly clear; every scientistintent upon proving the existence of a “competition gene”wants to be first. The first time I fell out of a window,I was eight and had just won a race against my brother.Indoors. What can I say, I kept going. The second time,I was ten and thrown out by a bad loser. Some peopleget awfully touchy about being told they’re awfully touchy. I beat David Myers in a bread-eating contest, fair andsquare, so he threw me out of his bedroom window. Ibroke two fingers and a flowerpot shaped like a WoollyMammoth. Natural Selection. A funny thing about competition is most living thingscompete without knowing it.A funny thing about competition is humansare the only animals who keep score.A funny thing about competition is how some people say,“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s where you lay the blame.” My grandmother used to say that. She doesn’t anymore. [End Page 118] Now she says, “There are men under my bed. I hear themall night long. They want to throw me out the window.They want to take my books. Let them try. I’m a light sleeperand I’ve killed a man before.” We’ve told the nurses shedoesn’t mean that last part, but honestly we’re not sure. Just as historians aren’t sure who invented the window.Many now say it was an ancient Roman named Septimus Orthowho first put a square hole in a wall and then covered itwith a pane of glass, sometime during the 100th century ad. The first person to be thrown out of it is believed to bea man named Gaius Publius who, as he fell to earth,famously cried, “Ille rapuit formam meam!” or,“That guy stole my idea!” And then a thousand violinsbegan to play and a thousand golden trumpets did rendthe Roman air. You know the funny thing about competition?In German it’s spelled with a K.A funny thing about competition is it’s lonely.A funny thing about competition is some peoplebelieve competition gets to have its own roomin the brain and doesn’t have to share with anyone. But that may not be true. It may have to sharewith a twin sibling known as caution. Last August, scientists in New Zealand announcedcompetition and caution not only reside togetherin the frontal lobe, they have bunk bedsin the Anterior Cingulate Cortex. It’s tight in there; they fight all the time. And whenthey’re not fighting, they’re racing,racing through the house. [End Page 119] It’s a race to the windows and each time there’s notelling who’ll win. In America, jumping from a window isamong the least common forms of suicide, accounting forjust 2%. Remarkably this puts it just 1% above payinga five-year-old to poke you to death with a cocktail sword. In Hong Kong, self-defenestration is a clear favorite,accounting for over 52%. I don’t mean it’s a competition,but if it were, some might say it’s fixed because they havemore skyscrapers and no guns. The funny thing aboutcompetition is even when it’s fixed, it isn’t certain.For example, Albert Camus who said there was only one philosophical questionthat needed answering: Should I stay or should I go?Albert Camus who gave us The Fall, The Stranger,The Myth of Sisyphus, who preferred to do all his writingwhile standing at a lectern. Albert Camus who was killedin a car wreck on his way to Paris. Before leavingProvence that day, he wrote postcards to his wifeand each of his mistresses, same message four times,“Longing to...