Muse-Meister Muses More

I've noticed that some people play up or down, depending on the team they're playing. They'll just barely scrape by, your worst game ever, playing against the losers, but you give the real good players a solid run for their money, and sometimes they win and sometimes they don't, but they tried their best. There's something about seeing those other people play well that makes them play well, but they forget when the other team sucks.
Then, there are those people who always play at the same level, regardless. This is typically a very high level, in my experience. You may remember these people as the ones who ruthlessly trounced you playing badminton in high school gym class, and had no remorse about it whatsoever, even though you were just being nice and you let the scrawny ninth-grader in on your team. Those people went on to be Olympic athletes, or gas pumpers, depending, not on their consistency, but on their original level of quality.
I'm one of the former. By virtue of being surrounded by all of these wonderful people, I look really good in relief. I'm that scrawny ninth-grader, who just played the best badminton game of his life, because y'all were nice enough to put me on your team. So keep up the good work, people. You're making me look good.