Vacation Poker

My dad, my brother, my brother's friends Shaun and I played poker while on vacation last week. I did fine, sportingslywise, when I was losing initially, and was gracious when I ended up taking all the money. But my dad was less so, getting really agitated when he lost a hand or two, and blowing up a bit when he lost to a flush that he didn't think Shaun even knew he had. I realized that he's been like this lately, and that I fear playing games with him as a result, sort of cringing at signs that a freakout might happen.

First of all, I hope I don't evoke that reaction in people I (used to?) play with, but I suppose they couldn't rightly be blamed.

But it also made me realize that, at least on some level, I got my problem from him. Is this a nature or nurture thing? I don't feel like I have a lot of memories of him being like this when we played games as a kid; maybe a little, but it seems to be mostly a recent phenomenon. So is there a bad sportsman gene? I sort of doubt it's anything that direct, though I may well have inhereted other underlying elements of his personality that add up to this problem. I wonder what those are? Probably too much to go into now, but the experience was indirectly eye-opening nonetheless.

I also got thinking about my tendency to complain in general, and how that relates to bitterness during losing, but again, I'm not up for it at the moment.

Its a good thing hardle anyone actually reads this.

Blog's not Dead...

...I'm just not playing any board games lately. What has become of me? I feel the itch coming back a bit, we'll see what happens.