Participation Trophy

I’ll never forget the day we met. You were dressed boldly, in orthopedic Velcro shoes, yellow sweatpants, and an oversized Legend of Zelda T-shirt. You completed the ensemble with a green mesh pinny, which you debonairly or mistakenly wore as a necklace, your head thrust fetchingly through an armhole. I was young then. Fresh out of my bulk-order box. I can see myself now as I must have looked to you on that spring day: a gleaming figurine of indeterminate age and gender, gazing alluringly from my plastic podium, my lithe limbs splayed in a vaguely athletic pose, perhaps running, perhaps swimming, or maybe even doing a non-sports thing, like dancing or debate. In any case, my body glinted in the sun like gold.

Although you had signed up for only one event that Field Day—a relay race in which you ran in the wrong direction—you never questioned my presence in your life. When Ms. Musgrove handed me to you and said, “You tried your best,” you pumped both fists in triumph. I’ll never forget how you caressed me with your gentle, Yoo-hoo-scented hands. When you held me to your chest, I could feel your heart pounding, and, though I knew that it was partly because your body was so unused to exercise, I sensed that there was also something more powerful at play.

On the bus ride back from Randall’s Island, you held me on your lap, completely smitten. You carefully sounded out the words engraved on me—“If you had fun, you won”—and, though your reaction was muted at first, you eventually figured out that the sentence rhymed, which sent you into ecstasy. I remember how you laughed hysterically, tears streaming down your face, as you repeated the rhyme to yourself, and then to the other children on the bus, to make sure that they also knew about the rhyme.

When you got home, you whisked me to your room and put me in a place of honor, next to your Mad magazines on a high bookshelf.

Then your brother got home from his bar-mitzvah lesson. And, between bites of his intimidatingly sour candy, he told you that our love was a lie.

“It’s not a real trophy,” he said. “They give it to everyone, whether they’re good at sports or not. They even give it to kids who are—” and then he said a word that isn’t said anymore but that you both used to say constantly.

He told you that I was “cheap” and “made in China,” and that I wasn’t, as you’d somehow assumed, made out of real gold.

You defended me as best you could, but when he left I could tell that something had changed between us. Your brother had taken me off your shelf for demonstration purposes. Now that he was gone, you didn’t put me back.

Years passed. And, with the exception of one afternoon during puberty when you became curious about my butt, you moved on. I was banished to a crate inside your closet. Meanwhile, you went off to prep school, in search of more glamorous conquests. First came those waifish science-fair certificates, dressed up in their showy, gilded borders. Then that buxom chess cup, with its obscenely leering mouth. By the time you graduated from high school, there were Latin plaques and honor pins and a slew of whorish Model U.N. gavels stacked up on the shelf I’d once called home.

If you spoke of me at all, it was with ridicule.“Remember participation trophies?” you’d scoff. “Those were so—” and then you’d say that word which people don’t say anymore but which you continued to say for longer than most people did.

You went off to college, where your taste grew even more refined. You were after high-class trophies now, medals made out of real metal, or whose names were at least searchable on Wikipedia. After graduation, you had your diploma framed, and you set out lustfully into the world.

Your twenties were a blur of striving, writing for TV. And, though “The Daily Show” pretty much won every award every year, you managed to win a few trophies and some obscure plaques for, like, books and stuff. But there were always bigger awards to win, so you kept pushing, even after your children were born. And sometimes they would run into your office, in their Velcro shoes and oversized T-shirts, and try to play with your trophies by making them kiss each other. And, as you ushered the kids out of your office, you wondered if participation trophies still existed. You doubted it, but you couldn’t be completely sure, because you didn’t attend many of their athletic events. The school was kind of far away, and you were busy.

Then, one day, you heard your children running down the hall, and you sighed, dreading the inevitable interruption. But, instead of barging into your office like always, they ran right by, and you felt a sharp pang, like someone discovering, in the middle of a relay race, that he’d been running in the wrong direction.

You thought about the picture books you’d flipped through two pages at a time, the half-assed baths and phoned-in Hokey Pokeys, the fake trips to the bathroom at that birthday party, writing notes to yourself in a dank Chuck E. Cheese stall. And it wasn’t just the kids, it was everything—the offensively generic anniversary cards, the increasingly baffling text chain with your college friends, the disturbingly corporate guest list for your birthday party, the sand in your laptop and the unused snorkel, the decades marked by milestones rather than by memories. And it occurred to you that maybe, all this time, instead of ignoring life, or scavenging it for material, you should have . . . what’s the word I’m looking for?

Oh, yeah. Participated.

Maybe what we had was real. Maybe it’s the rest of your life that’s been—I won’t say the word, but you know the one I mean. And now you’re not young anymore. Your surface is peeling, your figure is drooping. Unlike me, you’re biodegradable.

But here’s what’s so messed up about me: even though you spurned me, mocked me, and, on that day I mentioned during puberty, confused the hell out of me, I haven’t given up on you.

I know we won’t be reunited. You’re in L.A., and I’m in a landfill, buried under four hundred tons of WOW potato chips. You could search for a million years and never find me. But maybe you can find the part of yourself that you left behind on Randall’s Island, the part that was present and grounded and found joy in a rhyme that barely worked.

Through your office door, you can hear the muffled tap of little feet. You’re behind, but the race isn’t over. For God’s sake, turn around. Pass the baton. Go out there and prove yourself worthy of my love. ♦