Everyone's a Winner

A couple of weekends ago, I had two chickens entered at a local fair. It was not something I was interested in, because I’m lazy and didn’t see the point—they’re my chickens, so how good could they be?—but my wife insisted. She reasoned that it would give our daughter something to do, since she’d been aced out of working with the horsey group she belongs to that was performing there (long story). Anyway, my wife and daughter picked them out of our flock of eight barred rocks, shoved them into a dog carrier, and delivered them to the fair, where they were given blood tests (they were stuck under the wing, the part I like to eat). When I visited them Saturday morning, they looked like the other barred rocks, except for the one that my daughter selected, which had pink feathers because a girlfriend of hers decided to paint her with nail polish.

The day dragged on, as such days do, and I happened to be hanging around the cages when a fair official started going down the row affixing ribbons to some—though not all—of the cages. I held my breath. I was weak in knees. And what do you know, my pink chicken was awarded a yellow third-prize ribbon and the other one a blue first-place ribbon. I was practically dancing with delight. I buttonholed every remotely familiar-looking person to say, “Look, my chicken won!” I was not unaware of how absurd that sounded; it was part of the fun. I cornered the judge shortly afterward to ask what I’d done right, because even though I don’t know anything about chickens, it was I who won the ribbon, not the chicken. It turned out she wasn’t the judge; she was just handing out ribbons. A girl assisting her had worked with the judge and told me that the blue-ribbon winner conformed to barred-rock-chicken standards, both in terms of proportions and the perfection of its bars. I looked at the chicken more closely, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. The other chicken was given a prize just for being pink. That I could understand. I took pictures of both of them, which of course didn’t come out.

The rest of that day I floated around the fair feeling pretty good, checking in with the chickens from time to time to get a fresh dose of first-place bliss. It was on one of these visits that I noticed that the other chickens were being awarded too—in fact, every single one of them got something. The air went out of the balloon. Everybody wins. Although I have to admit that this approach toward competition is directed toward children, who just want a prize, rather than adults, who just want to win, it took what was special about what had happened—this unexpected, inconsequential, and therefore delightful gift—away. I felt compelled to tell all of those familiar faces that the ribbons meant nothing—they were an award for just showing up, which in my view is no award at all. However, a little later on, when we were driving home and my thinking cleared, I realized that first place is first place, so I began to negotiate with my daughter over who would get what. I told her she could have the pretty yellow ribbon and I’d take the ugly blue one. Convinced she had made a deal, she insisted we make a pinky promise, which I was only too glad to do, having cleverly manipulated an eight-year-old.

When we came back the next day, the first-prize winner, whom my wife named Ida, had laid an egg. Even better things were to come. Another ribbon mysteriously appeared on Ida’s cage, a bigger, showier one. At first I thought it was a ribbon my daughter had won for eating watermelon with no hands or walking a banner around the horse ring. But then I realized that this was special indeed, that it was an award of a larger order, a Reserve Special. However, when I realized it wasn’t the highest order, I was vaguely disappointed, which is ridiculous given the fact that I had no expectations coming in, but that’s what happens—it’s never enough. I tempered my unreasonable response by noting that very few of these ribbons were given out. A real distinction had been made. Now all I had to do was figure out how to get it away from my daughter.