Tin Man

[madbaker]

Since it's the holiday season, I started thinking about emotional baggage. Specifically, a cheap tin candy tray I've kept since March 1989.

I'm not a natural athlete. To paraphrase The Tick: you might be on a first-name basis with hand-eye coordination, but I call him Mr. Coordination.

I fenced in college. Foil first, then epee. I enjoyed it - but I'm not sufficiently tall, quick, or coordinated to be very good, so I stopped after graduation.

However, at a match in 1989 everything clicked. I had an "on" day. You've probably had them too. Roger Zelazny put it well, describing a chess match in Unicorn Variation:

"For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best."

That was how it was for me. Everything I tried worked: lunges, parries, even running attacks. When I had a bout with a fencer rated much more highly than me, I destroyed him 10-3. (Yes, I remember the score after all this time.)

I placed second that day. I lost confidence in the finals against the best fencer in the room and he beat me handily. Still, my coach was astonished. The division was too poor for real trophies, so I got a tin candy tray with a hand-written sticker on the back reading "Second Place - Epee". It's cheap, disposable, mass-produced, and unremarkable.

It wouldn't be the only thing I would choose to take if the house were burning down - but it certainly would be in my top ten. Which is why I got mildly peeved when the wife tried to use it for its titular purpose, holding candy. To her it's a waste of space because it sits there collecting dust. She's right.

But to me, regardless of looks, it's a trophy. The one day when every straw I touched was instantly spun into gold. I've never hit that peak again in any physical endeavor. Maybe I never will.

But when I look at that crappy mass-produced piece of tin - I smile. Because I did once. I remember.

Comments

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

Nicely written ... seriously.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

On a similar note ... but not as emotionally charged ... <g> In High School, there was a point where I was quite frustrated. I was an active Thespian, but my membership never got sent in (even though I clearly remember paying it), which meant I never got the 'pins' for my letter sweater.

I was in All State Orchestra in my Junior year of High School, and spent a week in Fairbanks for that, and never got the patch for it (even though folk in my school who had been All State Band and All State Choir did ...).

So, when the thespians handed out their "Golden Hammies" my Senior year at a little end of the year dinner thing, and I got "Most Improved Actor", I was stunned. Even better, there was a small (and I do mean small) little ash-tray thingie with a (cheap -- from a set of kids' farm toys) plastic pig that was painted gold glued onto it. (The next year they had someone make something that looked more like an actual award, with the pig in what might be an heraldic sejant erect position, about 8" tall ... sheesh. Figures ... I got the cheapo one, but what the hell?)

I still have my "Hammie". When the glue broke (after numerous moves) I went and glued the pig back on. It's one of the few momentos of any achievements that I still have from that time (I won't go into the box of momentos that disappeared after my fiance and I broke up with tons of stuff including music awards from school, and more ...). The silly little thing is by the printer with tons of other little knick knacks, and most folk who even notice it (if they do) have never asked.

After all these years, that silly-looking thing still means something to me, and while most of the knick knacks by the printer could go away (I'd be annoyed, but not horribly), I'd fight over that one.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I understand. I'm a terrible swimmer. Just terrible. And every summer I would go to Huntsville, Alabama, and watch my younger step-sister win blue ribbons in swim meets. And when I was sixteen, I won a blue ribbon in a swim meet in Huntsville, Alabama.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Do you still have it?

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Of course.

[rustmon.livejournal.com]

son, that's NOT a candy dish.

THAT's the classic definition of a trophy.

Hang it on the wall where trophies belong!

[scendan.livejournal.com]

That's a great post and story. Keep that trophy a trophy. After all, that's it's inner nature. It just LOOKS like a candy tray.