The Art of Fine Cheating

Now, I grew up being taught to not cheat.  And yea, I always tried to cheat in Monopoly or those other silly (but super fun) board games when playing with the siblings, but I was sneaky and smart when I did it.

I know it is not ok to cheat, but if you are going to do it, at least make an attempt to be good at it.

Sasha, the star pitcher on Kremenets.

Once known as a cheater, always known as a cheater.  Unfortunately for me, I learned that some people in my school like to cheat! … No surprise there….  But now I will always know them as a cheater, and sometimes it is hard to trust people who cheat.

 (*** I just want to clarify, that I do not in any means cheat anymore… not even in board games****)

The craziest thing that got to me was that the cheating took place during Little League baseball… I mean Come On!!  Little League?  Are we for real here?! 

Their idea was so lame, that at first I thought it was a silly mix up.  I then realized that it was on purpose when after the game I got a whole bunch of sarcastic “Thanks a lot Morhan”, and fingers pointed in my face.  Now, if anyone knows me well:  1. I cannot stand fingers moved around in front of my face and 2. I am all about fairness and honesty  (now, after long hard lessons learned as a child…) 

Me just doing my job with doing "the book"

Well, long story short, this whole little scheme went a little too far for my personal liking, and as one anonymous person said “don’t F** with the F’ers”,  I do have to say, this just makes me laugh, and is rightfully true.  In America, if you are a bad sport, you get kicked out of the game, and if the whole team takes part in bad sportsmanship, they can get kicked out of tournaments, leagues, etc.  Since this was not a possibility, they just lost a whole lot of respect and their little goody bag at the end of the tournament.  It would have been unsettling but fine if they cheated and admitted to it rather than denying it and then getting mad at me for just doing my job (I was the good ol’ hardworking scorekeeper).     

One of the main points of sports teams for kids is to teach them how to work together on a team, good sportsmanship, and simply the art of the sport.  If everyone is taught how to lie, cheat, and play dirty, well…   I don’t think I would want to know what this world would look like! 

Now, you have to remember, cheating unfortunately happens all over the world, so this isn’t simply a Ukrainian thing.  It is just that much more difficult to handle when there is a language barrier and when everyone seems to be ok with it.  It would have been nice to get more than just 1 teachers back, and it would have been nice to see the elders give a little lesson about playing fair and honest.  But there was none of that…

Misha, from Lutuhene MVP Catcher

On top of this frustration, that will slowly blow away in the wind of time, is I then hear my kids telling me that their English teacher says that I write their homework and they just copy what I write.  Not only do I spend HOURS sitting with them each day teaching them how to read and write, and helping them with pronunciation, to hear that we are both accused of cheating from the teacher just blows my mind. If she only knew how long they spent each week on the homework assignment she gives… I asked the girls if I could talk to her, but they all said no because they will then get yelled at.

BLAAHHHHAHAHA.  Sometimes life is frustrating.

I know this isn’t the most positive blog post ever, but I just can’t refrain from posting it.  I think it is important to share this.  It is a huge problem in the world, but especially in this country.  I don’t even think they have the same definition as Americans do on “cheating”.  It is the norm, and sometimes, like right now, I can't handle it...  

But on a positive note, the baseball tournament was an absolute blast regardless of the little incident.  The kids were punks (in the sweet little “you better watch it” type way), and hanging out with some fellow PCVs at my site was just a nice breath of fresh air.  One night we showed The Sandlot dubbed in Russian to all the baseball kids which was so great!  I enjoyed watching it with them simply because they reminded me so much of the characters.  The kids improved so much from the previous year, and it was exciting to see my boys slug those balls!  (Their catching and throwing can still be improved … a lot)

I love baseball, even little league is fun for me.

So it was a great round 2 of Little League baseball in Ukraine for me, and I will sure miss it…

All the kids with their gifts from the lottery!