the trophy story

For better or worse, I have a long memory. I am -- how you say -- good at keeping grudges. Unfortunately for my family, that means I am able to remember obscure things they did to traumatize me during my childhood. And there is no anecdote that I pull out of my little twisted mind more often than “the trophy story.”

When I was a girl, I played softball for a few seasons. I was not very good; I am not very good at many sports at all. I distinctly remember one unfortunate incident when I swung at a ball that was BOUNCING. ON THE GROUND. That was not my finest moment.

Anyways, one season my dad was the coach of my team, Pink Panthers. Coach sat the team down at the beginning of the season and said that the only thing that mattered was whether we had fun. It wasn’t about winning or losing, but about doing our best and having fun and being a team. I would say that mission was accomplished. We certainly didn’t win every game, but we won a few. We had fun. It was a good season.

Until the end of the season, when my dad revealed that we wouldn’t be getting trophies. BECAUSE WE DIDN'T WIN ENOUGH.

Now, I certainly don’t believe that mediocrity should be rewarded. But I will tell you that it was somewhat implicit in that league that if you played softball as a kid, you got a trophy at the end of the season, usually presented at a pizza party. It was a memento of a summer in your life and I still have all the ones I got from playing on other teams. Teams, that I might add, may have lost more than the Pink Panthers did that season.

My other problem with this scenario is that in that heartwarming talk that Dad gave us at the beginning of the season, winning was in no way defined as a metric for our success. The only metric provided was that we have fun. We had fun; therefore, didn’t we deserve a symbol of our accomplishment? If he had said, “If you girls win a lot, we will get trophies,” then a merely decent record would not have sufficed. But he never brought up the parameters of receiving a trophy, because at that age, they were implicit: If you played, then you got a trophy.

I mean, the parents paid for them. I think they were reasonably priced.

Now, this is an anecdote that I bring up a lot. When people come over for dinner, I ask them in front of my father about the fairness of this situation. Dad has tried to make it up to me over the years, giving me little fake trophies or trophies with masking tape labels recognizing my accomplishments. BUT IT IS NOT THE SAME.

Now, maybe you are wondering what this has to do with my cruise vacation, which I was in the middle of recounting. Well, on the cruise ship, one of their little activities is playing trivia, and the prize is a little trophy of the cruise ship. I told Dad that if I won a trophy, then I would put this anecdote to rest.

I do just want to state, however, that I made that deal when I thought we’d be playing as a team. In actuality, we had to play as single individuals. So I don’t know if this deal still holds up.

The trivia game was 15 questions. Four people playing in the room got 9 out of 15, including both Dad and me. Which means we had to go to a sudden death tiebreaker, which some other guy won. It was especially heartbreaking, because Dad and I had both changed an answer at the last minute, and if we had only kept our original answer, either of us might have won without having to deal with the tiebreaker.

But there was another chance to win a trophy, and that was for a game called “Famous Faces.” They would flash people up on the screen for just a second, and you had to identify as many of the 60 shown as possible.

I got 54 correct. The guy who had won the first trivia game got 56, so he got another trophy. But the guy who was running trivia said that my score was so impressive that he gave me a trophy too! Hooray! A trophy for me!
What is especially significant about this trophy, to me, is that I didn’t have to win first place to receive it. I just had to do my best, which is what Dad said I had to do all those years ago when I was playing softball. Sure, that trivia guy may have just given me a trophy because the other guy had already won one, but doesn’t a ragtag team of softball playing girls deserve trophies too, maybe especially because all the other teams already got one?

Please feel free to tell me how correct I am on this matter in the comment section. You can also forward me emails that mention how I deserved a trophy when I was 10, and I will make sure my father sees them. But I will, on my honor, try to put this trophy anecdote to rest now.