Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 24, 2013

Out of four doubles teams?

They had leftover trophies.

Oh my… not even for lowest score.

You are a total whack if the words “Assistant to” are in your job description.

Good for you, Pig!

They don’t keep score in the little bitty kids football games.

lombardi says winning is the only thing. patton says americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser.

Awww! Let’s all be sympathetic to Pig and congratulate him on being selected seventh runner-up for the title of someone in his league who can breathe and participated! And if I see even a hint of irony out there, someone will get his ping ponged!

Missed Rat’s meaning there. I normally rant against Rat but there are times I agree with him, and this is pretty much one of them. Played two years Little League as a kid and got a couple trophies for it. Second year we were the worst team in the area so the trophy was just a “Hey, congrats for playing.” First year my team finished second in the county and the trophy reads exactly that (and if we hadn’t gotten cocky in the county championship game we might have gone on to play the state quarter finals, might being the key there). Guess which one I actually admire and feel has any real meaning.

If you have a kid or two, and a car… undoubtedly the car has a “My child is an honor student at ______ school” bumper sticker. Every parent gets one unless their kid is a juvenile delinquent. They kinda’ lose their meaning when everybody has one.

But we certainly can’t let the little ones feel inferior and have lowered self-esteem, now can we? Liberal education = where every student is the same, and they’re all above average. Yuck!

Opposite of liberal education – when I was young. If anyone misbehaved in our class, the teacher would threaten to send us to the “special education” room and we would sit in a corner and have the “special” kids laugh at us. That was a bigger statement about them than it was us, and created a lot of humor about these kids. Education has come a long way from that.

Breathing and participating is so often under-rated and unappreciated.

A professor recently coined the phrase “Tea Cups Kids”.

It means kids that are so used to being told how wonderful they are and that everybody wins, will break and chip like a tea cup the moment someone tells them the word no or that they are not really special.

I also remember playing baseball and if you didn’t finish in 1st, 2nd or 3rd you didn’t get a trophy.

My 12 year old has a participation trophy that he calls my fake trophy. The shame of it all is that the kids they are trying to make feel good know that it’s a sham.

Reminds me of the trophy each member of my last bowling team received…“Special Thanks From The Owners for Saving Wear & Tear On Our Pins…BY MISSING THEM SO OFTEN!!”

I grew up in the days when not everyone received a trophy – somehow, I survived.

Way to go, Pig!

At least it’s still something…

xxx

Everyone gets a trophy and an icecream sandwich…

So, there are three kinds of people:.Below average: those who are happy to get any kind of award, even if it’s one like thisAverage: those who get awards like this one, but realize that they don’t actually mean anythingAbove average: Those who actually get meaningful awards

Okay, so Pig runs in saing that he won a trophy; Rat says that winning awards doesn’t mean what it used to; and, Pig replies that he didn’t win, he was just seventh runner up.

So, isn’t the trophy an award for being the 7th runner up?

Such forbearance on Rat’s part! I am amazed! He has been pitched a fat lob.

I got a trophy once for coming in second in a two-person race. Congratulations, Pig!

But at least Pig ‘feels good about himself’. We don’t want anyone to bruise their self esteem.

He was 7th runner up….out of 6 participants. He was so bad he fell out of the bracket

with a nose that big you’d think he’d come in at least 2nd?

I remember those stupid participation awards

“A prise? Is that anything like a prize?”-They are a lot alike, only totally different. Weren’t you apprised of that? ;-)

In six years of elementary school I won exactly one sports day ribbon — when our team came in third in a three-team relay race!

At least Pig got a trophy. I think that’s a first.

So thats 7 out of what?

There is an implication that there are trophies for people who don’t breathe, didn’t participate, or both.

Congratulations Pig!

WTF!! All of the sudden I wanna eat some bacon.