One-Upmanship

by Madeleine Kando

I went to see my doctor today. I made sure to dress in my best suit, put on my most expensive perfume and, in general, look expensive and important. Why, you may ask. Who would want to dress up to go see a doctor?

Well, I always want to look good when I have an encounter with someone who has the upper hand in a face to face meeting. Someone that I want something from and who does not necessarily want something from me. When I go for a job interview, I want someone to give me a job. So I dress up. What the interviewer gets out of it is a potential employee, but during that initial interview, the parties involved are not on an equal footing.

The interviewer has the upper hand. That is also the case when I go to the doctor. What I want is successful treatment for my ailment. What the doctor wants, (aside from getting paid), is potential healing of my body. I am not even sure if all doctors want this, because that means that you won’t have to come back.

Come to think of it, I can find this one-upmanship in places that, at first sight, look very egalitarian. I have a twin sister with whom I have had a one-upmanship relationship ever since we were born. When there is more than one of you, people’s energy is spent on trying to figure out who they are talking to. By the time they think they know, they already forgot what the were going to say. Competing with a doppleganger might have colored the glasses with which I view social relationships.

What about friendships? My brother Tom likes to point out that friendships are very much subject to the one-upmanship rule. He talks about his ‘I have a bigger car, so I am better than you’ kind of friends. Or the type of friend that insists on picking up the tab, not because they are generous, but because they want to show they are better off.

Celebrities and politicians love to play the one-upmanship game. It is as if they have gone through ‘upmanship’ training school. The semi-condescending pat on the shoulder. The subtle ‘I am not looking you in the eye while I talk to you’ trick. The ‘I am asking the questions here, not you’ technique. Asking questions is a very effective way of showing you are superior. You put your opponent in the position of giving up information, while you are on the receiving end. Who wants to be interrogated, anyway?

I don’t know if there is any area of human interaction that is completely devoid of one-upmanship. Maybe the mother-child relationship comes closest to being a purely altruistic, egalitarian relationship. Although many mothers compete with their daughters once the daughters have reached a critical mass of beauty and womanhood. Then, they have metamorphosed from daughter into female competitors.

Do we compete with pets? You bet your sweet bottom we do. We assume that, just because we are human, we automatically have the upper hand. Not so. My dog’s life revolves daily around gaining control of our ‘pack’. He blocks doorways by sprawling his big furry body out so we have to step over him. He paws my arm so I will pet him. He leans his heavy body against my legs until I have to move to the side. I could go on and on.

Do we compete with our spouses? One of my husband’s idiosyncrasies is that he likes to be ‘self-sufficient’ when it comes to his health. Going to see a doctor would be a sign of weakness and poor health, so he plays the one-upmanship game with me every time I have to see a doctor.

I won’t even start on the job front. Thank God I am self-employed, but I am sure the work place is one of the most fertile grounds for the one-upmanship game.

Do we compete with plants? I have tried to stare down my hibiscus the other day, to see if it would retreat or lower its leaves in submission, but nothing happened. I think I can safely say that plants have no need to feel superior OR inferior. They just are. So I never dress up when I go out into my garden.

In ancient China doctors only got paid as long as their patients were healthy, not when they got sick. That would be one sure way of leveling the playing field in our system. It would also allow me to save money of my wardrobe. leave comment here