Item Number 1: Bagpipe Trophy

Time in possession: It's dated 1994, which would make it 12 years now.

Cost: Free, as I won it in a competition. Let's say 2$

Description: A small trophy, gold coloured plastic music note and staff on top of a faux-marble base. Engraved metal plaque announces it as the "Novice Piper Award" for 1994 in the "L.S.B.S.P.B."


Story: This trophy was the first thing I picked up in my room. It has been sitting on my desk for years now and it is truly about as random a thing as I could possibly grab.

I played the bagpipes for 10 years, in a band called the Lord Selkirk Boyscout Pipe band. I have many stories about the band, although I expect them to be uncovered with future items. In this case, the trophy was won when I was 10 or 11 years old in an inter-band competition. I was against probably half a dozen other members of the band, and this would be the first and only trophy I would win in such a competition, as shortly afterwords I would rise to the intermediate level which I would eventually rise towards the top of, but never exceed. Frankly, I never had much heart in the pipes, but this trophy proves that I had enough skill to be of some, if minor, note.

That being said, I'm fairly certain that all the kids I was up against that year would go on to surpass me later on, until I was one of the few stragglers who would remain in the intermediate level (and therefore out of the competition band) for the remainder of my time with the group. But again, these are all stories for another day.

A little bit about the inter-band competitions- Band rehearsals would take place in a church basement, deep in the heart of St. James. Every Saturday morning I would wake up early to be dragged out to practice, a trek that took a good half hour at the shortest. The yearly inter band competitions were a nice change of pace: Instead of typical 3 hours of rehearsal (9-12: Yeah, I loved it) we would all hang around and one by one play a piece for a guest adjudicator. Usually it wouldn't take too long and after the winners were announced we could leave. The point behind this all was to both encourage friendly competition in the band and to prepare everyone for the upcoming competitions held around the city and province.

I actually got this trophy at the yearly band ceilidh, a social held every year to raise some money and give the band another chance to both perform and socialize. My name is on a plaque now, which was briefly in my possession, until I had to return it for the next year's competition. I don't know what I did with the plaque, but the trophy was put on my dresser, where it would remain until I moved it to make room for a TV, at which point it has lived on my writing desk, gathering dust and taking up space. Trophies like this are kind of weird- It has little sentimental value, but I don't want to just throw it away. That being said, there's not really much I can do with it. I suppose it will return to my desk, until I've worked up enough callousness to discard it for good.