“Tom, you’re a Winner!”

I wonder what appropriate mark of recognition could be awarded to someone who wins 3,000 games of solitaire. The Nobel Peace Prize would be inappropriate even though playing solitaire certainly is peaceful, but that prize has been tarnished by being awarded several years ago to a terrorist and most recently to a national leader whose sole achievement so far is being able to fog a mirror. Oscars are given to some who endure and manage to be in hundreds of movies, which I guess is a lifetime achievement. A winning gambler makes his/her own reward by winning consistently, something that just doesn’t happen in solitaire. Each win is torn from the jaws of defeat against disheartening odds. Some might say winning is its own reward, and I can agree to that intellectually, but emotionally I think I really deserve some tangible mark of recognition. After all, Three Thousand is a big number and fourteen percent means one game out of every seven ended in a smashing victory, demolishing the insidious “you can never win” threat implicit in this hopeless game. Wow, I need some counseling. Someone needs to pat my shoulder and say, “Tom, you’re a Winner! (Fourteen percent of the time.)”