A Tale of Two Competitive Friends

A Tale of Two Competitive Friends

Who Got to Play in Goal

Even though the two men were long time friends of a sort, it seemed like they had been competing with each other all their lives, something neither of them particularly liked, but did anyway. Tom had won the first challenge. He and Fred were both 10 years old, and each wanted to be the regular goal tender on their hockey team. That would leave the other to be stuck sitting on the bench just in case his competitor got injured or let in too many goals. Tom certainly won in that case. He played goal for every game, even one time when he was quite sick with the flu. He didn’t want Fred to play instead of him. He felt that he could lose his position that way. What if Fred came in and got a shutout! And the coach’s desire to win outweighed any kind of leaning towards fairness by letting Fred start a few games, even one. The flu game turned out to be a tie, with at least two goals scored by the opposition that Tom should have stopped. The team did not make the playoffs that year.

Who Got to Dance with Diana?

Their next competition involved asking a girl called Diana to dance at a Friday night school dance when they were both thirteen. It was their first such dance. Both boys had spread stories slanderous about the other concerning their purely fictional relationships with girls prior to the dance, and how they would slow dance with very active roaming hands. Diana turned both of the boys down when each of them asked to dance with her. Unfortunately for them, in both cases, they asked her for a slow dance. 

They did not have much luck with other girls there either. The stories had spread throughout the school. Boys they didn’t know slapped them on the back in appreciation. Girls looked at them like they wanted to slap them across the face. That effect lasted for several months afterwards. It wasn’t until the next school year that they danced with any girls at a school dance, and those two were new to the school, and hadn’t heard the rumours.

Who Got to Be Hired for a Part-Time Job at a Doughnut Shop

Two years later, both Tom and Fred applied for a part-time job at the local doughnut shop within easy walking distance from the school. It was well-known that the owner had a very strict policy concerning employees eating doughnuts without paying for them. Both knew someone who worked at the place, and took that person aside to tell a story about how their friend had regularly eaten ‘free doughnuts’ when he had worked at a similar but purely fictional previous job at another doughnut shop across town.

The story spread among the employees, and eventually reached the boss. Neither of the two boys were hired.

Following the Same Path

           Eventually they graduated from high school, a few years later from college in the same program, both becoming accountants. They helped each other study for exams. There was no competition for marks.  Then they were both hired by, and worked together for the same company without a hitch in the compete and slander department. At work there was nothing to be gained by doing that, so they could act like the close friends that they were in most ways.

Who Got to Be the Best Man?

The two young men had been fairly close friends with high school classmate Gerald, who was getting married to Glenda. When Tom and Fred went to his place for a few drinks in his backyard, they went straight to the backyard, hoping there was beer there. They soon overheard him say to his bride-to-be, that he was having a hard time deciding which of the two of them to pick as the best man at the wedding. Gerald was far too conservative to choose both of them and split the duties. Neither Tom nor Fred said a word about what they had heard.

Both Tom and Fred wanted to be given the honour, and certainly did not want the other one to receive it, at their expense. Unsurprisingly, both of them came up with a very similar strategy concerning what they told Gerald over the phone about what the other had said recently concerning Glenda’s sexual morality in high school. Neither of them became best man. Gerald told the two competitors that Glenda had wanted her brother to be best man.

Tom and Fred Settle Down

Over the next few years, Tom and Fred ‘settled down’ as the expression goes. They both got married, with the other as their best man. Gerald was never even considered. Their wives soon gave birth to baby boys. Tom called his son Fred, and Fred called his son Tom. Both were happy with that. The second generation Fred and Tom soon became close friends. The first generation Fred and Tom took several small steps up the corporate ladder at their place of work, getting positions that were roughly equivalent in pay and respect.

Who Got the Executive Job?

Then an executive job became available. It meant more authority, a much nicer office, posh paid-for dinner meetings with other executives, and a lot more pay. It was the talk of the company as to who would get the job. The gossip included what one employee had heard when the boss was talking with his secretary, saying who the top five competitors were before the interviews were even held. Both Tom and Fred were in that select group. This news was passed on to them by a fellow employee lacking disgression as they walked together into the lunch room the Monday of the week of interviews. Neither of them spoke of this when they sat down to eat lunch together on that day. They confined their conversation to relatively safe subjects of the low quality of the food in the cafeteria, and of how both their boys wanted to play hockey when they got older, both wanting to be goalies like their dads. The latter subject did not include mention of their own experience the year they both played on the same team, or how happy they were the next hockey season when they were on different teams.

Who Got the Job?

           After someone got the executive job, Tom and Fred remained friends. They ate lunch together most of the time, but not always, preferring sometimes to eat in their separate offices. Both had bought their sons pint-sized regular hockey sticks, not goalie sticks, without telling the other why they did so. Both of them wanted to dance with Diana at the reunion of their high school graduation class, both of them raced towards her to ask her to dance, only to stop suddenly, before she even saw them. Both went once together for the first time to the doughnut shop that did not hire either one of them. Both of them attended the christening of Gerald’s baby girl.

           Who got the job – Tom, Fred, or someone else who was not the subject of phony gossip?