Amazing discovery that turns out to be obvious...

Last night I made an amazing discovery!

That then, after I told my wife about it, turns out to be obvious....

Let me back up a bit.

On our visits to Baltimore and our granddaughters visits with us, Bern has been playing Tic-Tac-Do with the 5 year old twins, Morgan and Emma. I don't play with them because, unlike Bern, I'd never let them win.

Under my laid-back, calm and patient facade is the heart of a person absolutely dedicated to competition and, most of all, WINNING....

But last night I had a little time (actually, I have a LOT of time since I'm retired) and I played Tic-Tac-Do about 25 times with myself. And my Amazing Discovery was that I could never, ever beat myself in the game. I was astonished. What a good player I must be that I could never beat myself!

So I told Bern all about my Amazing Discovery and she looked at me the way she looks at me when I leave the refrigerator door open while making a sandwich or trim my beard and wash the trimmings down the bathroom sink or reach up into my sweater to pull down the cuff of the shirt underneath when I could have merely held the cuff in my fingers while I put on the sweater. (There are lots of other examples about when Bern gives me the look she gave me when I told her, "I can't beat myself at tic-tac-do", but I spare you having to read about them.

Here's what she told me about my Amazing Discovery that I could never beat myself at Tic-Tac-Do, "Of course you can't. That's obvious. You always know what you are going to do."

She didn't say, "you'd have to be a moron AND an idiot to beat yourself at Tic-Tac-Do", but I did hear a faint echo of that though she didn't say it, being compassionate, to a degree, about my idiosyncratic way of being in the world.

Here's what I wonder now: could someone who has multiple personalities have one that could beat another at Tic-Tac-Do?

That's probably a "politically incorrect" question. But I have as much difficulty with that as I have with leaving the refrigerator door open....