Constellation Prize

When I was in elementary school, we had carnivals twice a year, one in the fall and one in the spring. Family nights, basically, where we went to the school for a few hours and played games, ate hot dogs and cotton candy, and entered raffles. Everything was in the gym and on the playground.

One year, the prizes were themed after the solar system. There were posters, freeze dried ice cream (remember that?), key chains…things like that. If you won, you got one of those "good" prizes. If you played a game and lost, though, you still got a few glow-in-the-dark stars (the kind you can stick on your ceiling).

Those stars were at every game, so I played and lost a few times, and still had all these plastic stars and planets.

I heard one of the teachers explain the prizes to a parent. I thought I heard her say the stars were the "constellation prize," and it made sense to me. Of course, I could take these stars home and stick them to my ceiling in formation. I could make the Big Dipper and Orion. That was pretty cool.

It was a few years until I realized the prize you get even when you don't win is the consolation prize. Misunderstandings like this have happened to me before then and since (more on that some other time), and "constellation prize" is one of the better outcomes.