Today, I took some trash out before getting in my car and heading to work. I live in an apartment, so I share a dumpster with all my neighbors. This fact must be perfectly clear for any entertainment to come from this story. So what did I see, when I got to the dumpster? A trophy. Upon closer inspection, I saw not one, but two trophies. The first to catch my eye was a bowling trophy, followed by a golf trophy.

I stood there in disbelief. Who threw out these trophies?

Was a husband forced by his wife to throw out these trophies to start 2009 in style? Maybe a family’s apartment was getting too cluttered with children’s Christmas gifts, so the trophies had to go. Or perhaps it’s much deeper than that. Maybe a man, let’s call him Robert for the sake of story telling, threw the trophies away out of shame. Perhaps Robert was an athletic star growing up, but as he neared his 40th birthday he felt he had lost a step. So maybe Robert began taking performance-enhancing drugs to dominate the local bowling and golf leagues. And now, years later, he looks back on his multisport stardom and he’s ashamed of himself.

But it’s probably not that dramatic. Either way, those trophies come with a story. I just wish someone was around to tell it.

(I hope you can see now why it was vitaly important to understand that I go to a community trash dumpster. If I had found trophies in my own trash, we’d all know they were mine. That’s not the case here. I’m way too competitive to toss out plastic symbols of athletic prowess.)