Life doesn't have a scoreboard.

Or does it?

I'm Meg Wallitzer and on this selected shorts,

fiction about people who can't help themselves from keeping score.

Some will win, some lose, and others will probably be awarded the ribbon for

participation. You, you get a gold star just for joining us. I'm Meg Wallitzer. Stay with me.

You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

Life doesn't offer one way to measure success. Sure, there are obvious things like becoming a billionaire or a CEO or winning a Pulitzer Prize, but these are not some objective measure of what it

means to win. After all, what are all these things to an avowed Marxist or some spiritual

guru who let go of material possessions? Then there are those who measure their success by their

ability to fulfill the biological imperative, with each child

marking a new achievement. And believe it or not, there are those who measure their fulfillment

in moments with family and friends. Weirdos. In short, there's no perfect system for tracking a

life's wins or losses, unless we just decide to start keeping score?

Heck, why not give it a shot?

If there are people out there who think that life is just a game,

for the next hour, let's give life a point system.

Watch the scoreboard and see what happens.

Our first story explores the shocking subtext of one intergenerational scrabble game.

In a second story, a man carefully tracks an old friend on social media while eyeing his own accomplishments, and in a third, a teacher tries to put himself on the board by stealing points from an unwitting

student. Our first story in this show about keeping score is by Simon Rich. He's contributed a lot of

very funny stories to the New Yorker, many of which have been collected in volumes, including

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