I'm cheering for you

One of my favourite games is called Ricochet Robots. Every round, a robot and endpoint are chosen at random and the players stare at the board until they can figure out how to get the robot to the endpoint using as few moves as possible.

When I play, to me, it feels a lot like programming, the goal is elegance, because the elegant solution is often the best one, however, often times, a brute force solution will be arrived at faster.

But that's not my favourite part, my favourite part of the game is, after I come up with a solution, the other players have one minute to come up with a better one. And I love it when they do. I love seeing their more elegant than mine solutions. For me, it's a game that encourages cheering on your play partners.

We, her and I, we were playing a different game, one that doesn't encourage you to cheer for the person you're playing with. But I still was. I told her as such while we played. "I'm cheering for you to win." And when the final scores were displayed, she had indeed won. My smile towards her was genuine.

Her dream is to have a baby.

She knows I can't.